Disney is calling their five-time Oscar-nominated Black Panther: Wakanda Forever the most watched Marvel premiere ever on Disney+ on a global basis. Without supplying viewership figures, the company said Monday that the claim is based on hours streamed for the pic over its first five days.
The Ryan Coogler-directed sequel, which has amassed $842.3 million at the global box office, dropped February 1 on Disney+ after an 83-day theatrical window.
Meanwhile, Samba TV, which measures viewership across a panel of 3 million U.S. smart TVs, says the Live+4D household viewership was 2.1 million.
That’s a notable number, tracking 400% ahead of the same frame for Black Adam‘s 1.5M draw on HBO Max, the same as Disney/Marvel Studio’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and just under that of Thor: Love and Thunder (2.2M).
Of the above movies, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever over-indexed by the highest margin among Black households (+44%), Hispanic households (+27%), and adults 20-24 Gen Z households (+9%).
The takeaway in all of this: windows work. Juxtapose this with the theatrical day-and-date numbers of Disney’s Labor Day 2020 launch of Mulan (1.12M), Disney/Marvel’s Black Widow in July 2021 (1.1M weekend per Samba) and Jungle Cruise (777,000) — granted, they were both available on an extra pay-tier on Disney+.
Said Cole Strain, VP Measurement at Samba TV, “Just as it smashed box office records last year, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever made a splash in its debut on Disney+ as 2.1 million U.S. households streamed the much-anticipated sequel to the iconic film featuring a star-studded cast.”
“Black households were more likely to watch Black Panther: Wakanda Forever than other recent superhero franchises, including Batman, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Black Adam. There was a significant over-index of 44% against the average U.S. household among Black households based on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever viewership in the first five days, surpassing that of the other films. The Black Panther sequel also caught fire with younger audiences, including Gen Z households who were nearly 10% more likely to tune in compared to the average household,” Strain added.
“The Black Panther franchise continues to make history, not only for standout actor Angela Bassett’s first-ever Oscar nomination and win for Marvel Studios, but [also] its diverse representation both on and off-screen, which drove Black household viewership to over-index by strong double digits,” the Samba exec continued.
Samba TV gathers viewership data via its proprietary Automatic Content Recognition technology on opted-in smart TVs. Samba TV’s ACR is integrated at the chipset level across 24 of the top smart TVs globally and captures content that crosses the TV screen, regardless of source. This results in unbiased viewership insights around the world; Samba TV’s 3M smart TV research panel is balanced and weighted to the U.S. Census across age, gender, ethnicity and household income.
By contrast, Samba TV’s panel is nearly 80 times larger than Nielsen’s household footprint of 45K homes. Samba TV doesn’t estimate viewership on mobile phones. Samba TV measures at the household level, and does not extrapolate to the individual viewer. This is an important differentiation from for example numbers released by individual streamers who report at the viewer level.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever received Oscar noms for VFX, Make-Up and Hairstyling, costume design, Rihanna’s original song “Lift Me Up” and supporting actress Bassett.