Wonder Woman 1984 basically doubled the number of HBO Max accounts, exceeding 17 million
Aux Features HBO Max
Wonder Woman 1984 was the first mid-pandemic superhero film to give up on the idea of a traditional box office premiere and open its gilded arms to the streaming universe. When HBO Max announced that the Patty Jenkins-helmed sequel would be landing on the platform Christmas Day, it was clear that it would stand as one of the streamer’s biggest (for now) debuts since its inception. According to CNET, HBO’s latest quarterly report quantifies just how much of an impact the movie has made on the streamer, confirming that “HBO Max doubled its number of total activations at the end of 2020 compared with three months earlier,” bringing the total to 17.2 million accounts. In October, HBO’s parent company AT&T disclosed that HBO Max secured only 8.6 million signups through September.
It’s worth noting that “activations” is the key word here. Unlike its major competitors Netflix and Disney+, which users can only access via a paying subscription, HBO Max is available a number of ways, including automatic access through an existing HBO subscription with their cable provider. The boost here refers to the number of folks who finally decided to dust off the app and create an account, but the data doesn’t differentiate between those who chose to shell out the extra bucks for HBO Max directly and those who always had access and finally succumbed to the siren’s call of “MORE CONTENT!” Simply put: WW84 clearly boosted interest in the streamer, but it’s not clear if that jump in accounts included an increase in revenue.
Ultimately, the magnitude of the increase lies in the eyes of the beholder. On one hand, platforms like WWE Network—which was just acquired by Peacock—would have probably endured a few cage matches for even 8.6 million active accounts. On the other hand, comparing the 17.2 million total users to the 37.7 million households that are technically eligible to launch the app at no additional cost might still make the whole thing underwhelming. Time and a crapload of incoming movies from WarnerMedia will paint a clearer picture of HBO Max’s growth, but this recent uptick in logins lassoed by Diana Prince is a promising start.
49 Comments
Oof, what an unfortunate way to start the service. Honestly, HBO Max has had some good content that was welcome in the entertainment void that was 2020, Wonder Woman was not one of those examples.
Just in case people didn’t think the Wonder Woman movie fanbase wasn’t as rabid as Snyder stans, there is a guy on Twitter that was live-tweeting watching the movie 84 times. No clue if he finished it or not.
I wonder how much HBO Max finally being available via Roku (in many cases to people who were already paying for regular HBO) had an effect on those numbers.
Right. I signed up as soon as it was available for Roku, and I never got around to watching WW84 during the window. (I still haven’t seen the first one, either, though I’m sure I’ll watch them both at some point.) I’m ashamed to admit this, but one of the things I’ve enjoyed the most has been the ability to just put on Looney Tunes while I’m doing other stuff.
I still haven’t seen the first one, either, though I’m sure I’ll watch them both at some point.
Don’t bother with the second.
Truly, it’s not worth the 2-1/2 you’d spend.
The first Wonder Woman is really good but has a shaky final act. The second one is also good but messy. It’s a lot like the Richard Donner Superman movie in that it’s enjoyable if you can overlook some pretty big leaps in logic.
I am one.
This. I cancelled my regular HBO because of the Roku spat (after Lovecraft Country was done), figuring I’d re-up after they ironed out their differences. I subscribed Xmas day, so it was partly so we could watch WW84, but also because the shenanigans had made me unsubscribe beforehand.
This is exactly the case with me. No shade to WW84 (I haven’t seen it so I’m not judging its merits) but I have 3 Roku TVs in my house so I signed up as soon as the deal was announced)
I’m kind of surprised HBO Max isn’t picking up more subscribers, because it has become my go-to streaming service when I’m looking for something to watch now. Aside from (obviously) the great HBO TV shows and whatever movies they have the streaming rights to in a given month, they have the entire Studio Ghibli library, a ton of the classic Adult Swim TV shows, a ton of the DC superhero cartoons and movies, and a decent selection of Criterion Collection films. Compare that to Netflix, which still pumps out good original content at a decent rate but struggles to keep their library stocked with good TV and movies that they didn’t produce in-house.
You do know that you can stream a ton of AS shows online without having HBOmax on the AS website, right?
Not everything. For some reason, it’s extraordinarily hard to find all the episodes of Sealab 2021 legally online for streaming . . . unless you have HBO Max. You can’t even buy all of them on Amazon Instant Video.
Sure, I’m not saying that there was nowhere else on the internet that I could get Adult Swim or that it’s the only reason I subscribe to HBO Max, just that it’s nice to have it right there alongside a bunch of other things that I also like watching.
I get HBO Max for free from my cable package but it I didn’t I would be paying for it separately. It really has a deep library. Way better then AppleTV
Way better than most of all of the other streaming channels except for Disney+. All of the classic Looney Tunes cartoon, Turner Classic Movies including Citizen Kane and Casablanca, most of Adult Swim including Rick and Morty, all of the DC animated universe, all of the classic Batman and Superman movies. I got it the free month trial from my cell phone service, but i’m keeping it.
I agree. I’m really enjoying HBO Max, and I’m surprised the response to it is as anemic as it is, considering how good their offerings are.
Yeah, I’ve been really impressed with HBO Max for all of the reasons you list. Plus Looney Tunes!
If I had to guess, it’s because it came out plumb in the middle of the Streaming War; people are fatigued by the idea of yet another service and don’t care to try it out, or might even be annoyed that they’d have to subscribe to one thing to regain access to content they’d previously had access to. I’m sure there are also people who are in the “but I have HBO”/”but I thought HBO had a service” confused camp.
Yeah that’s probably true. And if it were just “HBO but now also some Cartoon Network stuff and other TV shows that you remember from your teen years” I would have been way more hesitant about adding it, but the fact that it’s that stuff plus a pretty solid slate of movies is what swung it for me.
I love the Turner Classic Movies hub. Catching up on a lot of classics
Same – a lot of huge blind spots in my cinematic knowledge that I’ve always meant to catch up on and have now finally been getting around to.
Yeah, and Netflix’s selection of classics has always been terrible. If I want to watch something by Kurosawa or Fellini, I usually have to just hope the library has it on DVD and that their copy won’t be scratched. HBO Max makes that a little better.
I gotta pile on the weakness of WW84 here. I can see that we were very much trying to get a deep story going, but flubbed it. The effort was notable (at least by me), but executed poorly.So WW84 doubling HBO Max’s number of subs is a bit like a fast food place doubling their number of daily customers via a great food offering, that turned sour on the customers about 5 bites into the food.
The incentive for remaining has been fumbled.
Count my parents as one of those “activations”. They’ve had an HBO cable subscription since time immemorial, but they wanted to watch WW84 so I helped them set up HBO MAX at no extra cost.And then I may have borrowed their login.
My mom’s cable login has done wonders for me not having ever had cable of my own as an adult.
Same here (on both points). Did you also get to have some variation of this fun conversation?
“It says it’s on HBO, but I can’t find it in the listings or OnDemand.”“It’s on HBOMax.”“Cinemax?”“No, HBOMax. It’s not the channel; it’s their own separate app.”“Do I have that?”“I think it comes with your cable subscription. You’d have to create an account…”“Do it for me.”…later…“Why do they have that separate app? Why not just put it OnDemand?”“I… I don’t know, Dad. You’ll have to ask the suits at HBO.”.
It was worth it in the end. They like it and find a lot to watch there that’s not available anywhere else.
My mom is technically adept enough that she could get through the process of setting up the HBO MAX account and installing the app on her phone without any issues, although she pestered me a few times because she was worried something might go wrong or that she might get charged extra money. (“No, mom, ‘in-app purchases’ doesn’t mean you automatically get charged.”) It helps that my parents had both already used various streaming apps from their phones to watch stuff via the Chromecast I got them a few years ago; specifically Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. So using a different app (HBO MAX) that does the same thing was no big deal.
Well, when you come down to it..they are not “wrong”. Really the only difference is that with an app you can enter it directly without an intermediate provider. And unless you are a cord cutter or one of those weird people with no TV’s, I never really got why you would want to watch a TV show or movie on a smaller device when most shows and movies just are much better on a bigger screen.
Oh, I agree! I feel like HBO is making it needlessly complicated for their existing cable subscribers by making some content only available through the app.
It was fortunate they were able to make WW1984 the premier title for the HBo MAX rollout. If it had come out in theaters there probably would’ve been a BvS like drop in the box office.
If it had come out in theaters there probably would’ve been a BvS like drop in the box office.
It did come out in theatres, and there was a significant drop between opening weekend and the second weekend at the box office. It made $16.7 million domestically in theaters opening weekend, and it made $5.5 million over the second weekend. It made $3 million over the third weekend. Even allowing for the pandemic, those drop-offs are big. A loss of 2/3 from week 1 to week 2, and another loss of almost 50% from week 2 to week 3.
I went to see WW1984 at the cinema, even knowing it was available on streaming. Better with the big screen.
Ha. I can’t imagine going to see that piece of shit movie in a theater during a pandemic.
the theatre was empty except for me and my friend, but where I live there is no covid-19 so there’s no danger.
If you say so. I know that movie wasn’t going to be the one to get me to a theater anyways. Thank God I didn’t have to leave my house for that dreck.
mm, a great summer superhero blockbuster. this one was better than the first. there were moments I laughed, then wanted to cry, was in awe, and with a clear resolution. was very happy.
Well, there are fans for everything.
Imagine all the doubled numbers of HBO Pepsi Max subscriptions, it’s easy if you try.
I absolutely love HBO Max. It’s become my go-to. But goddamn this movie was a slog.
Weird thing, I liked that it was a slog. The villain was fun to watch. But for once it wasn’t MCU or DCU and it was nice not having to carry 4 suitcases and a personal item into every fucking scene.
According to CNET, HBO’s latest quarterly report quantifies just how much of an impact the movie has made on the streamer,
confirming that “HBO Max doubled its number of total activations at the
end of 2020 compared with three months earlier,” bringing the total to
17.2 million accounts. In October, HBO’s parent company AT&T disclosed that HBO Max secured only 8.6 million signups through September.
How is that attributable to Wonder Woman 1984? What time frame is defined by “the end of 2020″? From the wording, it seems like they mean October through December. What reasoning are they using to say that someone who signed up in October signed up specifically because of Wonder Woman 1984, a movie that came out in December?
Simply put: WW84 clearly boosted interest in the streamer
No, that’s not clear.
So many streaming services now. It’s amazing, especially for someone that grew up renting videotapes. But how the hell is everyone finding the time to watch all this stuff?
In my case, I gave up and stopped trying years ago. In fact, I’ve never subscribed to or used a streaming service.
Quitter.
I recently switched from Netflix to HBO Max and I have some logins for one or two others. I know I’m not going to watch everything and I don’t try to.
I kind of do a revolving door thing. I zero in on a show I want to watch. Check it out during the week. On the weekend I just watch movies and new stuff I need to catch up on. You are never going to be able to watch everything. So, just choose something and stick with it.
They signed up for WW1984 they’re staying for the Friends reunion
I gave it a rewatch. The more I think about Wonder Woman 1984,
the madder I get about it. It’s so frustrating that they bungled the
live action debut of Cheetah. I really shouldn’t have been surprised
that the movie stumbled with Barbara Minerva when it’s precedent set by the comics & cartoons.
Hyperlinking isn’t working currently (FIX KINJA!), so I’ll just directly post the link to my TED talk here:
https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2021/01/30/why-does-wonder-womans-cheetah-never-prosper