“Black Widow” was the most-streamed movie for the week in its debut as a free title on Disney+ after its premium window on the streaming service ended, according to Nielsen’s weekly streaming rankings.
The Marvel superhero film with Scarlett Johansson was watched for 676 million viewing minutes during the week of Oct. 4-10, topping the list of original movies for the week and landing at No. 5 overall among any streaming titles, including behind hits like “Squid Game,” “Maid,” “On My Block” and “Midnight Mass.”
But “Black Widow” in its free-streaming debut didn’t come close to matching what both “Raya and the Last Dragon” or “Cruella” did when they first landed on Disney+ as free titles. “Raya” in its free debut back in June topped 1 billion viewing minutes, whereas “Cruella” hit 815 million viewing minutes.
But “Black Widow” had a much wider and more successful theatrical rollout than those films, bringing in $183 million domestically at the box office, not to mention a global opening on Disney+ as a Premier Access title that Disney said earned $60 million.
Nielsen says that “Black Widow” specifically was viewed by a 60% male audience, a third of them being between 35-49 years old, making it the second-most male-skewing title for the particular week.
It also managed to dwarf the second place film, Netflix’s “The Guilty” with Jake Gyllenhaal, which continued strong in its second week and brought in another 445 million viewing minutes. Disney+ also saw increased interest for the Halloween movie “Hocus Pocus,” which was the 5th highest viewed movie with 224 million viewing minutes at the top of October.
But nothing came close to the enormous numbers put up by Netflix’s “Squid Game,” which exceeded the 3 billion viewing minute threshold.
Nielsen’s streaming rankings only look at shows and movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Apple TV+ and Disney+ and are delayed by roughly a month.