‘Masters of the Universe’ Just Proved Streaming Success and Box Office Success Aren’t the Same Thing
Box office numbers have a way of shaping a movie’s reputation before anyone’s had the chance to actually watch it at home. A rocky theatrical run can follow a film around for months, even when the story it tells turns out to be exactly what audiences wanted all along.
That’s precisely the redemption arc playing out for ‘Masters of the Universe,’ the big-budget reboot of Mattel’s sword-and-sorcery franchise starring Nicholas Galitzine as He-Man. After a lukewarm theatrical debut earlier this summer, the film has found an entirely different reception once it reached people’s living rooms.
According to fresh data from Nielsen’s streaming ratings for the week of July 20 through 26, ‘Masters of the Universe’ claimed the No. 1 overall ranking across every streaming service in the country during its debut week on Prime Video. The film racked up 1.17 billion minutes of watch time in just seven days, a number that puts it in exceptionally rare company.
Only one other title crossed the billion-minute threshold that same week: ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ which logged 1.12 billion minutes on HBO Max. That the decades-old sitcom was the only thing keeping pace with a brand-new theatrical release says a lot about just how quickly ‘Masters of the Universe’ found its footing once it left theaters.
The streaming success stands in sharp contrast to how the film performed during its initial run. ‘Masters of the Universe’ opened in theaters on June 5 and pulled in just under 114 million dollars worldwide against a reported budget between 170 million and 200 million dollars, numbers that made it one of the more disappointing box office showings of the summer.
Despite that theatrical stumble, critics were more receptive than the box office totals might suggest. The film currently holds a 67 percent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, alongside a considerably stronger 86 percent audience score, a gap that often signals a movie word-of-mouth eventually rescues.
Prime Video wasted little time getting the film into subscribers’ queues, debuting it on the platform on July 22, just weeks removed from its theatrical release. That short turnaround window appears to have worked heavily in the film’s favor, catching an audience that may have skipped the theater but was more than ready to watch from home.
Directed by Travis Knight, best known for stop-motion projects like ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ and ‘Bumblebee,’ the film follows Prince Adam nearly two decades after arriving on Earth as he’s summoned back to the planet Eternia. The story leans into the same mythology that made the original 1980s cartoon and toy line a cultural touchstone for an entire generation.
Galitzine leads the ensemble as Adam and his heroic alter ego, joined by Camila Mendes as Teela, Idris Elba as Man-At-Arms, Jared Leto as the villainous Skeletor and Alison Brie as Evil-Lyn. That kind of star-studded lineup, paired with a franchise carrying decades of built-in nostalgia, may have been exactly the formula streaming audiences were waiting to discover on their own terms.
The rest of the week’s Nielsen rankings only reinforce how dominant ‘Masters of the Universe’ proved to be. Netflix’s Kevin Hart comedy ’72 Hours’ placed second among movies with 791 million minutes, while Will Ferrell’s ‘The Hawk’ and Prime Video’s own ‘Ride or Die’ led the original series category with 944 million and 922 million minutes, respectively.
For a franchise that’s had a bumpy road back to the screen for decades, the streaming numbers offer a meaningful vote of confidence heading into whatever comes next for the ‘Masters of the Universe’ universe. It’s also a reminder that in the current entertainment landscape, a film’s real audience doesn’t always show up in the first weekend, sometimes it shows up weeks later, remote in hand.
With numbers like these, it’s easy to see why fans are already buzzing about the possibility of a sequel finally getting greenlit.
Do you think Masters of the Universe deserves a sequel after its huge streaming debut?
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