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Streaming audiences for David Chase’s “The Many Saints of Newark” are focusing, as is the massive bump it gave to the series that inspired her, “The Sopranos,” according to the metrics from WarnerMedia.
While the film’s theatrical release last weekend grossed $ 4.6 million at the domestic box office, its performance on HBO Max underscores a significant advantage the WarnerMedia platform has over its competitors – the capacity to resurrect its deep bench of defining adult culture series.
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An origin story behind a young Tony Soprano and his father figure Dickie Moltisanti, “Many Saints” ended last weekend as the highest performing movie title on HBO Max – achieving more than triple the audience’s ratings. next most-watched title, the streamer said. The film has also outperformed other comparable films in its budget lineup, including recent releases like Hugh Jackman’s “Reminiscence” and Clint Eastwood’s “Cry Macho” (both box office underperformers hit by the pandemic. ).
More interesting, perhaps, is that the nearly 15-year-old “Sopranos” broke HBO Max records for weekly series viewing and landed the highest number of daily viewers in the history of Canada. service last Sunday. The Emmy-winning show, dominated by the late James Gandolfini, grew 65% week-over-week as “Many Saints” became available to subscribers. As with all streamers, the exact audience was not available and cannot be independently verified.
“We knew there would be an interaction, but we were surprised. ‘The Sopranos’ is such a popular series. He pops in and out of the Top 10 every now and then, and he’s not a heavyweight like ‘Friends’ in terms of breadth, but he’s doing just fine, ”Andy Forssell, executive vice president and general manager of WarnerMedia Direct-to- Consumer, says Variety.
The executive added that “Many Saints,” produced by New Line Cinema, provided an opportunity “for people to experience the series, or in many cases to reintroduce it. It was absolutely the highest week for” sopranos “never at the service. I’m not shocked by this, but I’m quite surprised that it has reached so much speed.
While much of this year’s HBO Max conversation has been tied to WarnerMedia’s seismic decision to release all Warner Bros. movies. Pictures 2021 simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max, the release of “Many Saints” and a windfall for “The Sopranos” provides a case study on how the company can leverage its creative strengths.
Read on for a Q&A with Forssell:
“The Many Saints of Newark” has been given the green light ahead of the implementation of the day and date strategy for HBO Max. Did you know early on that it would have this kind of double effect?
I think regardless of the day-to-day strategy, it’s kind of a no-brainer for us to feel passionate about this topic. People want more “Sopranos” in any form that David thinks there is a good story. We were super excited long before that, but it fits the day and date really well. All the complexities of the strategy imposed this year, we want people to see it. Many have seen it in theaters, much more have seen it on the service and will continue to see it on the service. It’s really good in this context.
Opening weekend ended with your announcement that David Chase has signed a new creative contract. What can we expect?
I’ve heard a few of the ideas, but nothing we can talk about publicly, other than the fact that he has earned the right to realize any ideas he has, and we’re excited to see him do it.
To address marketing, this film’s campaign added the phrase “A Sopranos Story” to the title just weeks before release. Was it intentional and did it affect performance?
There was a slight increase in marketing because it was really useful and appropriate framing of [Warner Bros. worldwide marketing head] Josh Goldstine’s team. I have a large content marketing organization that’s historically HBO, and they work closely with Josh. We drive a lot of what we call the “science of growth”. For example, how do you use data to be really smart about how we deal with media? How do we test and do loops there? This piece that you saw was a great creativity from Josh and the team that really paid off. Really simple framing.
“Many Saints” is very close to an original film while also being tied to a large television property. Obviously, you are dealing with several iconic libraries. Is the broader strategy to exploit them?
It’s in the eye of the beholder. There is a large audience who will agree that the HBO team have decades of muscle memory, doing what they do so well. It’s an interesting mix in that we have the HBO library and all that that is, and then we have the Warner Bros. library. TV. We feel very lucky. It makes weeks like this a lot of fun because there are so many diehard fans of “The Sopranos”, but this show is being discovered by high school and college kids right now. I do not know why. “Friends” swept through colleges a decade ago, and it’s interesting to see these things happen.
In terms of engagement, there is also a built-in game for die-hard “Sopranos” fans that involves identifying younger versions of their favorite characters in “Many Saints”.
It’s a funny thing about it. Obviously to a certain extent it’s an origin story for Tony and by the end of the movie you get a much better understanding of how he came to be what he became. But ultimately, he’s a fascinating character in Dickie Moltisanti. It’s so much fun to draw lines through the generations. It could have been done like caricatures, but David sailed so well.
What does a movie like “Many Saints” mean for what HBO Max considers an original movie?
In the traditional theatrical world, studios support films and they win or lose. In our world there is an element of that, we want the title to be awesome and we want it to perform. But it’s also part of our day and date slate this year. Our viewers have clearly voted that they come for the slate, there are a few titles that have grabbed them, but the slate alone is a reason for them to stick around. At the end of the year that will start to accumulate, it’s no longer 17 or 18 films, it’s just the queue. But we saw it clearly and “Many Saints” fits into that as a big part of the mix. The slate has been invaluable to us in a big way, especially in a year where SVOD and all televisions where new shows on any service were light due to the shadow of the shutdown. the production of COVID. The slate of the film has value.
The other angle is the interplay between a great movie like this and a long-running series like “The Sopranos”. As users, we love these characters and worlds. Sometimes we sit down and sign up for a couple of hours of a well-told story. There are other times when what we want is a service that gives us many weeks or months of fun watching something episodic. “Many Saints” was number one – by far – as the service’s biggest headline. It’s a great combination and it’s going to continue for weeks on end, so it’s going to have longer legs because of this interaction.
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