‘Lovecraft Country’ Premiere Draws 1.4 Million Multiplatform Viewers – Including HBO Max

HBO’s newest series “Lovecraft Country,” from Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams, drew 1.4 million viewers across all platforms, including HBO Max, on Sunday night. While that is more or less in line with the network’s two other recent big debuts, “Watchmen” and “Perry Mason,” it was slightly below both out of the starting gate. “Watchmen” started off its Emmy-nominated run last October with 1.5 million multiplatform viewers, with 800,000 of them tuning into the 9 p.m. ET linear premiere on HBO. In June, “Perry Mason” got off to HBO’s best start in almost two years with 1.7 million multiplatform viewers. Of those, 884,000 watched the 9 p.m. airing on HBO on June 21. It should be noted that it’s not exactly a 1-to-1 ratio, since “Lovecraft Country” numbers include HBO Max, which launched on May 27, the first time the new streaming service has been included in these numbers. HBO Max, which includes a large portion of people who already subscribe to HBO, has a little more than four million subscribers. It effectively replaced HBO Go, the digital viewing option for those who already subscribed to HBO via pay-TV, in the viewership count. HBO Go was shut down shortly after the Max launch. “Lovecraft Country” drew 766,000 viewers for its 9 p.m. debut that aired on the HBO TV channel Sunday night. Based on Matt Ruff’s novel of the same name, “Lovecraft Country” follows Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors) as he journeys with his childhood friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett) and his uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) on a road trip from Chicago across 1950s Jim Crow America in search of his missing father Montrose (Michael Kenneth Williams). Per HBO, “Their search-and-rescue turns into a struggle to survive and overcome both the racist terrors of white America and monstrous creatures that could be ripped from an H.P. Lovecraft paperback.”