So imagine for a moment that you’re Lucasfilm and you’ve not had a live action Star Wars property out there in a year. You’ve put one-hundred million dollars into making a new one, and that’s production costs only. You’re up there in blockbuster budget territory. Imagine you’re the executives at Disney, and the takeoff of this live action Star Wars property is key to your streaming service (upon which much or most of your company’s stock value rests). There’s a lot riding on The Book of Boba Fett. Like, a lot.
So now we’ve got better statistics (in my opinion) than when we first received Samba TV metrics. Nielsen is giving us their best guess into how popular The Book of Boba Fett is, and it isn’t good. We can go into the numbers, we can go into the breakdown of households, we can parse out how all of this compares to Samba TV’s numbers or how this translates to numbers of people watching this thing. But hang with me, because it really doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t. Here’s what matters:
If Lucasfilm released a new Star Wars movie with a $100,000,000 production price tag and a similar marketing budget… and that film came in eighth place… what do you think the response would be in Burbank with Disney? Now, I don’t care how you want to spin this thing, you want to pretend that Disney just blew a hundred million dollars on a Star Wars live action with a star that has been linked to this property for well-over a decade — and they’re going to be happy with eighth place? Eighth?
C’mon.
And it’s not like this is some glorious eighth place that gets you close to first. There’s no snapshot finish where everyone’s within a hair of winning the thing. Cobra Kai is at almost 2.5 billion minutes watched and your big End-of-Year “throw everything at it” series gets 389 million views. Your opening salvo just got beat by an underperforming Hawkeye for crying out loud. The difference here is like coming out with a movie at the box office which picks up $38 million in ticket sales and your competitor grabbed $250 million. Who’s winning here?
1. Cobra Kai (Netflix), 2.42 billion minutes viewed
2. The Witcher (Netflix), 1.83 billion
3. Emily in Paris (Netflix), 1.11 billion
4. The Wheel of Time (Prime Video), 630 million
5. Hawkeye (Disney+), 539 million
6. Queer Eye (Netflix), 466 million
7. Lost in Space (Netflix), 452 million
8. The Book of Boba Fett (Disney+), 389 million
9. Stay Close (Netflix), 349 million
10. The Great British Baking Show (Netflix), 338 million
— Nielsen Ratings for Dec 27 – Jan 2 Original Series per The Hollywood Reporter
You want to know how bad this is? If you include “acquired series”, Bluey the cartoon dog for preschoolers and toddlers is nipping at your heels. Go into an executive meeting and explain that away.
And it’s not like I’m here to harp on The Book of Boba Fett. I’ve been reporting that Jon Favreau, the guy behind the series, is likely to lead The Walt Disney Company creatively to a larger degree. I just gave The Book of Boba Fett Episode 5 a great score for its review. I’m not out to trash this property. But if you expect me to look at how The Force Awakens performed at the box office, The Mandalorian performed streaming (its premiere more than doubled Boba Fett), and then pretend that The Book of Boba Fett’s opening numbers were anything other than a catastrophe, I’m not game. There’s no way anybody at the C-Suite of Disney is pleased with what they’re seeing. This is “red alert” change the game plan level bad. When you think about the subsequent episodes likely dropping until this latest one (which almost certainly is going to be a ratings rocket), the public is giving a very strong message to Disney.
You can hide behind ideology, you can hide behind your fanaticism for Star Wars, you can pretend that Cobra Kai is some worldwide phenomenon that blows away whatever Star Wars once was. But what you can’t do is believe that Star Wars is a big deal right now in getting subscriptions for Disney+. If Disney wants to spend $100 million on a property that fails to spin wheels, have at it. But how about this? Netflix spent $500 million for five years of Seinfeld. Seinfeld is wiping the floor with The Book of Boba Fett.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, and keep reading That Park Place for all the latest in streaming news, rumors, leaks, and analysis.
