‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Dominates Streaming Charts; Will More Streamers Start Sharing Blockbuster Movies?

James Cameron has returned to Pandora, and he’s brought an awfully large audience with him. Nielsen's ratings for the top 10 streaming programs from June 5-11 shows that Cameron’s latest movie “Avatar: The Way of Water” is obliterating the competition, garnering nearly 2 billion minutes of play time in that timeframe.

Netflix’s series “Manifest” comes in second at 1.6 billion minutes streamed. But “Manifest” has four seasons’ worth of episodes to stream, totaling more than 30 hours of programming. “Avatar: The Way of Water” is just one movie, making it all the more impressive that it has outpaced its competitors on Nielsen’s top-10 list.

The new “Avatar” film owes some of its success to the fact that it is currently available to stream on two unrelated streaming services, the Disney-owned Disney+ and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max. A contract between 20th Century Studios and WBD that predates Disney’s acquisition of the former entity stipulates that the two companies share the film. That contract is the reason that Disney decided to release the “Predator” prequel film “Prey” directly to Hulu last year, because a theatrical run would have meant sharing with a WBD streamer.

Disney may not have been happy about the arrangement at first, but the success of “Avatar: The Way of Water” on dual platforms may convince it to change its tune. Obviously, the company would like to keep all views of the film for itself, but there’s no guarantee that the movie would be seeing this many views if it were only available on Disney+. After all, Max recently overtook the Disney streamer in terms of overall market share in the United States.

The question now becomes whether more companies will start to share their biggest movies with other streamers. Such a trend is already developing on the TV side of the equation, with WBD once again taking the lead. In late June, it was reported that WBD was working on a deal to send several HBO Original series to Netflix, allowing them to stream there while still keeping them available on Max. Deals like this are good for both entities as they allow Netflix to offer additional programming to subscribers, and WBD gets a licensing fee, along with more notoriety for its shows.

Studios usually see their own films as sacrosanct, and blockbuster movies are cash cows that no media outlet is anxious to share with a competitor. But the success of “Avatar: The Way of Water” on Max and Disney+ might be the empirical evidence that streaming executives need to make the case that sharing marquee titles on multiple, unrelated streaming platforms is a savvy business move that will help their companies much more than it hurts.