Disney and Marvel are hardly going to be shouting from the rooftops about Black Widow suffering the steepest second weekend drop in the 24-film and thirteen-year history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but at least the prequel is continuing to post strong numbers on Premier Access, even if box office takings have fallen off an alarmingly steep cliff.
The Mouse House broke from tradition by announcing that Cate Shortland’s comic book blockbuster had netted $60 million in Premier Access revenue over the course of a single weekend, bolstering the coffers that were already swelling from a $150 million theatrical rollout. Surprisingly, things are beginning to taper off already, and the National Association of Theater Owners have laid the blame squarely at the feet of the studio and online piracy.
However, the latest batch of data from Samba TV indicates that Scarlet Johansson’s grand finale as Natasha Romanoff continues to do big business on streaming. As per the third party aggregator’s initial figures, over 1.1 million Samba-enable televisions purchased Black Widow in the first three days it was available, and those numbers have remained strong across the subsequent seven, with an estimated 900,000 account holders taking the plunge this past week from Monday to Sunday.
While it’s hardly a like-for-like comparison, it’s still good news for both the boardroom and Marvel Studios that the drop-off on streaming is nowhere near as steep as the movie’s theatrical decline. It also stands to make the company more money in the long run, with Disney only having to hand over 15% of Black Widow‘s Premier Access profits to outside parties, while theatrical contracts can often result in up to half of a project’s total earnings being snatched away.