Mark me as shocked, and I mean truly shocked. Whereas I was told that the sixth episode of The Book of Boba Fett had tripled the twenty-four hour ratings of other Boba Fett entries, I had expected to see a major incline for the show’s weekly ratings. And though I believe based on sources and Google Trends data that the sixth episode did tremendously well in its first twenty-four hours, Nielsen is showing that Disney has a very serious problem on its hands. Instead of the weekly averaging skyrocketing The Book of Boba Fett in contention for the top streaming show online, the show is (at best) stagnant from Week 5 to Week 6.
This is the moment you can know that Star Wars is in trouble, and everyone in the executive positions of The Walt Disney Company must know it too.
Let’s take a look at the Nielsen charts out just today for Original Streaming Series:
| Rank |
SVOD Provider |
Program Name |
# of Episodes |
Minutes (Millions) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Netflix | Ozark | 37 | 2,372 |
| 2 | Amazon | Reacher | 8 | 1,843 |
| 3 | Netflix | Sweet Magnolias | 20 | 1,320 |
| 4 | Netflix | Raising Dion | 17 | 1,133 |
| 5 | Netflix | The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window | 8 | 1,121 |
| 6 | Netflix | All Of Us Are Dead | 12 | 850 |
| 7 | Disney+ | The Book of Boba Fett | 6 | 776 |
| 8 | Netflix | In From The Cold | 8 | 658 |
| 9 | Netflix | Murderville | 6 | 351 |
| 10 | Hulu | Pam & Tommy | 3 | 312 |
Okay, now compare that to the week prior:
Do you see what I see?
I see a show that went up only thirty million additional minutes of streaming, despite a new episode that literally blew the roof off of the Star Wars universe. Seeing Luke Skywalker training Grogu had the show hitting its top marks for internet searches, it had the community rocking, it had YouTube channels of every position banking massive viewership, and even the review data showed that audiences loved the episode. And yet… the show’s minutes streamed per episode went DOWN.
I don’t have a takeaway yet for this one. Like I said, I’m shocked. I’ve been communicating with the folks over at Valliant Renegade and we’ll be looking at the data more in-depth later today to get a handle on this.
Consider this: The Book of Boba Fett had its penultimate episode with Luke Skywalker, Grogu, The Mandalorian, and more surprise cameos, and it was beaten soundly by The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. One-hundred million dollar budget, and you’re getting stomped… STOMPED… by Sweet Magnolias. What in the world should we make of this? The only thing that I can tell you is that Star Wars is in deep, deep trouble; and if Star Wars is in deep, deep trouble, Disney+ and Disney investors had better be sweating bullets. You want me to watch subscribers numbers shoot up in earnings calls and then ignore that Disney+ shows are being walloped with no discernible growth off of those subscriptions?
Would you like to know just how bad it is for Disney+? How about checking the top ten original movies, where Disney typically wins just based off of kids sitting in front a TV on loop for babysitting purposes:
| Rank |
SVOD Provider |
Program Name |
# of Episodes |
Minutes (Millions) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Disney+ | Encanto | 1 | 1,329 |
| 2 | Netflix | Home Team (2022) | 1 | 596 |
| 3 | Netflix | Despicable Me 2 | 1 | 457 |
| 4 | Netflix | The Tinder Swindler | 1 | 405 |
| 5 | Disney+ | The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild | 1 | 311 |
| 6 | Netflix | Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen | 1 | 271 |
| 7 | Netflix | The Lucky One | 1 | 221 |
| 8 | Netflix | Despicable Me | 1 | 197 |
| 9 | Disney+ | Eternals (2021) | 1 | 197 |
| 10 | Disney+ | Moana | 1 | 182 |
Yeah, that’s Disney with a total of THREE movies in the top ten, and the only thing saving Disney+ is a miraculous Encanto movie that flopped in theaters. If not for Encanto becoming a cultural phenomenon, these ratings would be a bloodbath.
Now I’ll have more to say about what is going on with Star Wars once I get a chance to confer with other analysts and get into the data. But for now, just know that this is a huge blow to The Book of Boba Fett if nothing more. For perspective, this show had horrible ratings through its first four episodes, then had a boost for five and six, but its current ceiling didn’t even match Loki at a time when Loki only had four episodes! Plus, Disney+ had far fewer subscribers according to their earnings report. By the time Loki was hitting its finale, it was topping the billion mark in minutes streamed. But Loki wasn’t attempting to deliver a decades-long desire for fans of a franchise either. Yet it was cruising beyond what Boba Fett would eventually do.
Yes, we need to see the finale numbers for The Book of Boba Fett. Maybe they see a huge uptick. It’s also time, however, to ask if Star Wars is a demonstrably damaged brand.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
