“Cruella” Opening Weekend Sees 39% Fewer Viewers than “Mulan” on Disney+

Katie Francis

Updated on:

Cruella

“Cruella” Opening Weekend Sees 39% Fewer Viewers than “Mulan” on Disney+

Disney’s newest film Cruella hit theaters and Disney+ this holiday weekend. Based on the villain from the classic 101 Dalmatians, the movie saw many promotions around Walt Disney World, with a livestream from Disney Springs, specialty treats, and photo ops available.

Disney does not report its viewership for Disney+ programs like it does for theatrical releases. However, new reports are in from Samba TV, a company specializing in tracking viewers’ streaming habits (similar to Nielsen).

Samba TV reports that 686,000 households watched Cruella in the U.S. over the four-day weekend. For comparison, Mulan was also released over a four-day holiday weekend and saw views from 1.12 million households, about 39% more than Cruella.

A Disney spokesperson told Deadline, “Memorial Day weekend marked the first time consumers have had substantial choice in movie viewing since the onset of the pandemic. Cruella’s strong combined showing in theaters around the world and on Disney+ with Premier Access illustrates that flexibility at this time is critical and that the overall demand for great content is strong.”

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8 thoughts on ““Cruella” Opening Weekend Sees 39% Fewer Viewers than “Mulan” on Disney+”

  1. um… but Cruella made 25M in the states in theaters over the opening weekend. so if you do the basic math required, it’s already more successful from a financial standpoint.

  2. Love 101 Dalmatians. Couldnt be less interested in this movie. All villains do not need a movie to explain and give them an excuse for being bad. Movies need good guys and bad guys. Just let the bad guys be bad and dont worry about making the audience pity them…..ugh

  3. Cruella grossed 27 million at the box office during the 4 day weekend. If 686,000 households watched it for $30 a pop, that’s another 20 million or so, making the total 47 million. That’s still far from the top grossing movie of the weekend, A Quet Place 2 (horror movie, R rated), which grossed 57 million.

    • but by the same math, mulan made about 13.5M less. the headline implies that cruella was less successful than mulan because of the disney+ numbers being lower, when in fact cruella was more successful than mulan overall. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    • Yeah it’s not a fantastic showing to be sure. However, Quiet Place 2 is not rated R. It’s PG-13, which makes a big difference. If it was rated R it would have been a pretty mind blowing weekend performance post covid.

    • Yes – but a studio gets only about 50% of the gross from the theaters. Disney will get 100% of the gross from Disney Plus purchases.

      Disney should get 20 million from Disney+ sales, as well as 13.5 million from theaters = 33.5 mil.

      Paramount will net about 28.5 million from Quiet Place 2.

      Its a win for the Mouse House.

      • Hard to say still. We don’t know what kind of week to week drops the D+ paid rentals have. If it drops 80% next weekend combined with weak theater showings it’s still a net loser. Plus, how many people per household are watching those $30 streams? It’s very murky.

  4. This is somewhat of a misleading take as it’s not exactly an appropriate comparison in figuring ‘Cruella’s’ weekend success. ‘Mulan’ never received a domestic release in theaters so of course more opted to watch it at home via Premiere Access on Disney+ as it was the only way to do so. ‘Cruella’ managed to bring in $21 million from the box office alone in addition to the 686k that paid for Premiere Access, which is another $20.5 million or so. (All of which Disney gets to keep as opposed to the theater ticket revenue.) I really don’t think the two films should be compared in regard to their weekend viewership considering their releases weren’t even the same.

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