“Soul” Saw More Households Stream Film Than “Wonder Woman 1984” Over Christmas Weekend

The battle on Christmas Day wasn’t at the box office, but on your streaming device. According to Samba TV, more U.S. households chose to watch “Soul” on its opening weekend than those who watched Wonder Woman 1984.

While 2.2 million U.S. households watched “Wonder Woman 1984” on its opening weekend on HBO Max, nearly 2.4 million U.S. households streamed Pixar’s “Soul” on Disney+. “Wonder Woman 1984” peaked on Christmas Day with 986K viewers, while “Soul” had its biggest audience on December 26th with over 1 million households streaming the film.

Yesterday, WarnerMedia shared that says that “Wonder Woman 1984” was viewed by nearly half of platform’s retail subscribers on the day of release. In addition, they shared that millions of their wholesale customers, those who get HBO Max from cable or wireless partners, also streamed the film. As part of their Q3 earnings, the company released that they had 3.625 million HBO Max retail and 25.1 million HBO Max wholesale customers.

This would place their internal numbers a lot higher than what Samba TV is reporting. Samba TV data though is likely underreporting viewership on HBO Max, since it only tracks Smart TV devices (and anything Cast to them), which doesn’t have native apps on them.

Disney hasn’t released any numbers on the performance of the film. But given that they have close to 40 million U.S. subscribers, it wouldn’t be a surprise that more households tuned into “Soul.”

In 2021, HBO Max will premiere Warner Bros. entire theatrical slate on the service, the same day as theaters. The next film to be released will be “The Little Things” with Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto on January 29th, 2021.