Despite pulling out the big guns by giving Warner Bros. entire 2021 film slate a dual theatrical and streaming release, so far HBO Max‘s biggest draw for the year is one of the oldest tricks in the book: a TV reunion show. According to a new report, Friends: The Reunion absolutely dominated the competition when it comes to bringing in new subscribers for HBO Max.
Based on data released on Friday by the Antenna marketing firm, Friends: The Reunion brought in more subscribers than blockbuster hits like Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Godzilla vs. Kong, and Mortal Kombat. Via The Wrap:
The “Friends” reunion — the first time the main cast were all in the same room together since the NBC comedy’s series finale 17 years ago — overindexed when it came to female sign-ups. Over the three days since its May 27 premiere, new female subs accounted for 57% of the total new sign-ups, compared to 43% over the previous eight weeks, according to Antenna.
Considering Friends: The Reunion was originally scheduled to happen during last year’s launch of HBO Max, it’s interesting to think how well the burgeoning streaming service would be doing if the pandemic hadn’t taken the clearly white-hot event off of the calendar.
However, while Friends is the reigning champ of 2021, for now, the reunion is still dwarfed by Wonder Woman 1984, which is the all-time champ for bringing in new HBO Max subscribers. Based on the data provided by Antenna, WW84 brought in over double the number of new sign-ups that Friends did. Although, that film did have the advantage of premiering during the holiday season, and it had a very limited theatrical release due to the high pandemic numbers in late December, so more of the people who wanted to see it had to access it through the platform.
(Via The Wrap)
