Up until this point, all the talk about a backlash against Disney from either the left or the right has been just theory. That changes with the release of Moon Knight debut ratings which show a sharp decline in people tuning in for the latest Marvel property. While you might say that Moon Knight isn’t a popular character, or perhaps isn’t well known, Oscar Isaac doesn’t fill that bill… and Moon Knight has received a great deal of marketing from Disney to make sure it thrived. The opposite is happening.
Before we look at the Moon Knight numbers, let’s compare to Loki. When Loki debuted, Disney had far less subscribers (presumably and based on their quarterly reports) than they did a month ago. In a Yahoo! News article, it was recognized that Loki coming in third place for original streaming series (all streaming platforms included) was a disappointment… one of your most popular antiheroes losing to “Sweet Tooth” can’t be a positive. But things were looking up for Loki according to the article because this was just the beginning — and 731 million minutes streamed in your debut week sure ain’t bad.
Fast forward today and it’s clear that Disney executives, who have seen these numbers far earlier than we’re now getting them, have known something is going wrong. With a larger subscriber-base, this simply shouldn’t be happening.
From Nielsen:
| 1 | Netflix | Bridgerton | 3,202 | |
| 2 | Netflix | The Last Kingdom | 714 | |
| 3 | Netflix | Is It Cake? | 607 | |
| 4 | Netflix | Inventing Anna | 452 | |
| 5 | Disney+ | Moon Knight | 418 | |
| 6 | Netflix | Pieces Of Her | 294 | |
| 7 | Netflix | Ozark | 250 | |
| 8 | Amazon | The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel | 242 | |
| 9 | Netflix | Get Organized With The Home Edit | 241 | |
| 10 | Hulu | The Dropout (2022) | 190 |
Hmm…
Bridgerton is beating Moon Knight eight times over, and Moon Knight debuted at a 43% drop compared to Loki. Again, you can say Loki is more popular, but a 43% drop from series-to-series is no bueno. It’s slightly better than The Book of Boba Fett, but my gosh, that’s not saying much. Not when these are the series supposed to be carrying your platform with hundred million dollar budgets behind them. This is the sort of thing that is starting to get me worried about Kenobi.
Nielsen Streaming Top 10: ‘Moon Knight’ Debut Misses ‘Hawkeye’ Target https://t.co/xlVPijsZkA
— Variety (@Variety) April 28, 2022
And if there was ever any doubt that the story of Turning Red being the biggest movie yet on Disney+ being utter and total bunk, this week’s Nielsen ratings tell the tale. Three weeks into Turning Red’s run, in which it had never been in theaters with every reason to outperform movies that had, it was beat by Encanto. Encanto had been out for months. It doesn’t matter what you want to believe about Encanto, the numbers don’t lie: it is vastly less popular than Encanto and probably a dud in terms of picking up subscribers or keeping the ones Disney+ already has.
It’s time now to acknowledge that something is happening at Disney when it comes to fans. We now have evidence that the backlash has been manifesting for weeks. It doesn’t matter if you think Disney has been right or wrong, it doesn’t matter if you think a backlash is justified or not… it’s here.
For all the latest news that should be fun, keep checking out That Park Place! Let us know your thoughts on Turning Red and Moon Knight, as well as if you have disengaged from Disney+ in the last few weeks.
