Ever since the first season of The Mandalorian drew to a close, Disney Plus has faced a long wait for another one of their in-house originals to seize the public’s imagination in the same way that Mando and Baby Yoda’s first adventure did. It may have taken months for it to happen, but the Mouse House’s streaming service finally found their lineup dominating the cultural conversation once again thanks to the double whammy of Hamilton and Beyonce’s Black Is King.
A lot of criticism has been pointed in the direction of Disney Plus for a lack of engaging new content, which seems a little unfair for a platform that’s been around for less than a year, but as our all-conquering entertainment overlords, the company is held to a more exacting standard than a lot of their competitors.
While Netflix have spent the summer grabbing the headlines with a series of acclaimed and buzz-worthy originals like Warrior Nun, Cursed, Extraction, The Old Guard, Da 5 Bloods and The Umbrella Academy, Hamilton turned out to be more popular than any of them, with the filmed performance of the stage musical becoming the most-streamed title on any platform in July, and the competition wasn’t even close.
Research firm 7Park Data recently crunched the numbers to find out what subscribers had been watching in July, and a massive 37.1% of people polled had plumped for Hamilton at some point during the month. To put that into perspective, the number two spot was taken by Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries reboot, which nabbed 13.7% of the audience share, or way less than half of what Hamilton managed.
The report goes on to say that Hamilton was the largest audience for any one streaming exclusive over the course of a single month this year based on their data tracking, which has to be seen as a huge win for Disney Plus. Netflix are happy to shout their viewership numbers from the rooftops when the project in question has been a hit, but Disney have remained a lot more secretive. However, you’d imagine that the execs are probably pretty thrilled with Hamilton‘s impressive showing.