Yahoo News ‘Knuckles’ Sets Opening-Weekend Record for Paramount+ Original Series
Paramount+ got a record-setting opening from its Sonic the Hedgehog-adjacent series Knuckles.
The six-episode series, featuring Idris Elba voicing the title character and also starring Adam Pally, amassed 4 million hours of viewing worldwide over its first three days of release — a record for a Paramount+ original series, the streamer says. (Paramount+’s announcement also marks a rare instance of publicly disclosing any viewing data for its programming.) Paramount+ has 71 million subscribers, parent company Paramount Global said in its first quarter earnings report.
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With a running time of 169 minutes across all six episodes, Knuckles‘ 4 million hours of viewing equates to about 1.42 million complete showings (or “views,” in the widely accepted definition of the term for streaming shows) of the series in the opening weekend. For comparison’s sake, the No. 10 series in Netflix’s internal weekly rankings has averaged about 1.5 million views over a full week recently — a threshold Knuckles will likely have cleared with four additional days of viewing.
Paramount+ also says interest in Knuckles helped drive a big spike in viewing for other Sonic the Hedgehog titles on the service, which more than tripled their daily average last weekend.
“The Sonic the Hedgehog fans came out in full force,” said Jeff Grossman, executive vp programming at Paramount+. “We’re so thrilled with the record-breaking performance of Knuckles and the incredible lift the whole Sonic universe has experienced following Knuckles‘ premiere.”
Jeff Fowler, who directed the two Sonic feature films, helmed the pilot episode of Knuckles. He executive produces the series with Neal H. Moritz, Toby Ascher, John Whittington, Elba, Haruki Satomi, Shuji Utsumi and Toru Nakahara.
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