WarnerMedia and HBO Max have been talking about how well Wonder Woman 1984 did on their streaming platform but, like most streaming services, they didn’t provide any hard numbers of significance. Despite their reluctance to release numbers, the Nielsen ratings service released the numbers they officially tracked for the film and Wonder Woman 1984, per Nielsen, racked up the most viewing time for a feature film to date via their tracking.
According to Nielsen, Wonder Woman 1984 became the biggest feature film in Nielsen’s rankings and one of the biggest streaming titles of any kind since Nielsen launched its streaming measurement. For the week of December 21-27, HBO Max users spent 2.25 billion minutes watching Wonder Woman 1984. That’s equivalent to about 14.9 million complete plays of the 151-minute movie. It’s also 580 million minutes more than Nielsen’s previously reported No. 1 for the week, Pixar’s Soul. The Disney+ title was able to claim bragging rights early on but, based solely on numbers tracked by Nielsen, Wonder Woman 1984 was victorious during that viewing period. The film also pulled in the third-highest weekly total for any title since Nielsen began releasing weekly streaming numbers in August 2020.
Nielsen does not yet track HBO Max streaming figures on a weekly basis, although it does count WarnerMedia as a client. The ratings service says that the release of viewing figures for Wonder Woman 1984 is a one-time-only view “as we work toward introducing the data externally.” It seems like since WarnerMedia is a client, something was worked out to get these numbers released because HBO Max really had something to prove by showing that the release strategy for the film was successful on some level. As of this writing, Wonder Woman 1984 has grossed $37.7 million at the domestic box office and $148.4 million globally on a reported $200 million budget. Money was left on the table here in regards to the theatrical release but touting these HBO Max numbers flips the narrative a bit on the overall success of the film.
