With the 2022 entertainment playing field now all but in the bag, it seems Top Gun: Maverick is the gift that won’t stop giving. After a stellar performance in theaters, it opened to a new record on Paramount+, too. Our local entertainment attorney, Brandon Blake of Blake & Wang P.A, unpacks this new record for us.
Paramount+ Record
Top Gun: Maverick now officially beats out Sonic the Hedgehog’s premier weekend record to take the title of most-watched film to debut on the streaming service. And it’s not by a small percentile, either- it tops Sonic by 60%. Sadly Paramount haven’t revealed exact viewership numbers for either, however.
A Smart Revisit
Let’s give the achievement a small nod towards the marketing department, too. Paramount has the sense to revive the original Top Gun movie in the weeks leading up to the sequel’s debut on the service, and kept a Tom Cruise weekend theme going with replays of Mission Impossible, too. Both can be seen as a smart way to bolster their flagship launch, and it’s a worthy strategy to keep audience’s minds fresh and focused. Coincidently, this also saw a 400% boost for viewership on the original, and about 140% for the Mission Impossible franchise. We saw something very similar happen earlier this year with Game of Thrones on HBO Max, which saw a solid revival in anticipation of the launch of House of the Dragon that even managed to propel the old series onto the Nielsen top 10 viewership stats for a while.
Is this the resounding victory for Paramount’s ‘multi-platform’ release strategy as they claim? Well, at least they have the sense to see that a smart and well-marketed theatrical release can be a massive drawcard for subsequent streaming viewings. That’s a lesson a few other streamers need to learn, so let’s give them the kudos for it.
Film and Television 