{"id":2484215,"date":"2026-07-01T22:50:43","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T22:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2484215"},"modified":"2026-07-01T22:50:43","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T22:50:43","slug":"two-streaming-misses-make-mando-look-marvelous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/two-streaming-misses-make-mando-look-marvelous\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Streaming Misses Make Mando Look Marvelous"},"content":{"rendered":"

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(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what\u2019s popular in streaming TV and what isn\u2019t. I\u2019m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, <\/span>please subscribe<\/a> to get these insights each week.)<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/h5>\n

I just got a notice from the Hollywood Media Police that I haven\u2019t been citing <\/span>Backrooms<\/em>, <\/span>Obsession<\/em> and, of course, <\/span>The Mandalorian and Grogu<\/em>\u2019s $300+ million \u201cfailure\u201d in enough of my article introductions, so I have to do it today. (Seriously, I read three articles, just this week, citing these films. Twelve hours after writing that, I read three more. Crazy.)<\/span><\/p>\n

I mention this because, today, I\u2019m writing about a straight-to-streaming, popular-IP-based franchise film that came out the same weekend as <\/span>The Mandalorian and Grogu<\/em>, and it definitely underperformed, not even getting close to the streaming viewership equivalent of Mando\u2019s $350 million dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet, almost no one is talking about it.<\/p>\n

Seriously, this film\u2019s underperformance compared to the media silence might be the single best example of <\/span>The Argylle Treatment<\/a> I\u2019ve ever seen, since the same studio\/streamer also released a different IP-based film in theaters and everyone (<\/span>really, everyone<\/a>?) talked about how that one flopped. Also, a new Netflix comedy came out and flopped, yet the press barely covered this one either.<\/span><\/p>\n

So that\u2019s two juicy topics for Part II of this week\u2019s Streaming Ratings report. All that, plus an update on the battle for kids eyeballs on streaming, some TV show finales on CBS, a vicious kids battle between <\/span>Swapped<\/em>, <\/span>GOAT, Zootopia 2 <\/em>and <\/span>KPop Demon Hunters<\/em>, the Indy 500\u2019s viewership, streaming viewership (or the lack thereof) for <\/span>Scream 7 <\/em>and<\/span> The Bride!<\/em>, Cocomelon\u2019s future in theaters (I\u2019m not optimistic), all the other flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s dive right in!<\/p>\n

(Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen\u2019s weekly <\/span>top ten viewership ranks<\/a>, Luminate\u2019s Top Ten Data, <\/span>Showlabs<\/a>, <\/span>TV Time<\/a> trend data, Samba TV household viewership, company <\/span>datecdotes<\/a>, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen\u2019s data covers the weeks of May 18th to May 31st, 2026.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

You can find a link to my terminology here<\/a>.)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

This was a terrific week for \u201cThe Argylle Treatment\u201d:<\/p>\n

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Introducing the “Argylle” Treatment…And Let’s Say It: Rebel Moon is a Flop<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As a reminder, this is the idea that, due to the boost of awareness for theatrical releases, primarily driven by their marketing spend, we tend to remember the hits and misses at the box office more than streaming failures. This is reinforced by weekly box office reports, covered by every trade, a ton of Substackers, and most media outlets. heck, these days, box office analysis comes out before the weekend is even over!<\/span><\/p>\n

In contrast, we often can\u2019t even recall the names of film flops on streaming. (And sometimes the hits!) This results in a logical fallacy called\u2026<\/p>\n

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The Availability Heuristic<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If something is easily recalled, we tend to attach more weight to it. So consider these films\u2026<\/p>\n

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The Mandalorian and Grogu<\/span>
Masters of the Universe<\/span>
Jack Ryan\u2019s Ghost War<\/span>
Ladies First<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Do you rate all four of those equally in your mind? Probably not, since you likely barely heard about and then forgot <\/span>Jack Ryan: Ghost War<\/em> and\/or didn\u2019t know what<\/span> Ladies First<\/em> was!<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyways, both of those straight-to-streaming films underperformed. <\/span>Jack Ryan: Ghost War <\/em>only got to 13.5 million hours on Nielsen, and topped out at 16.7 million hours on Luminate. It\u2019s impossible to translate streaming hours to box office dollars, but if I had to describe it using a film\u2019s opening title card, I\u2019d say <\/span>Jack Ryan<\/em>\u2019s streaming viewership is in \u201ca galaxy far, far away\u201d from <\/span>The Mandalorian and Grogu<\/em>\u2019s $350 million global box office.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how it stacks up to recent Prime Video films (a longer timeline looks even worse):<\/p>\n

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Once again, I\u2019d note: why didn\u2019t Bautista and Momoa\u2019s <\/span>The Wrecking Crew<\/em> go to theaters?<\/span><\/p>\n

On Samba TV, <\/span>Jack Ryan: Ghost War<\/em> debuted at second place, then fell off by its third week. (That\u2019s not unusual for Samba TV, but it is another data point that it wasn\u2019t a huge hit.) Netflix\u2019s <\/span>Ladies First<\/em> did even worse, only making Samba TV for one week at eighth place.<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Ladies First <\/em>made Luminate as well, but again on the low side, peaking at 7.6 million.<\/span><\/p>\n

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It was also very low on the Nielsen charts:<\/p>\n

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Also, both critics and viewers seemed to hate <\/span>Ladies First<\/em>, giving it a 38 on Metacritic and 5.8 on 27K reviews on IMDb. Customers didn\u2019t love the Jack Ryan film either, giving <\/span>Ghost War<\/em> a 5.7 on 27K reviews. (<\/span>The Mandalorian and Grogu<\/em>has a 7.0 on 67K reviews and <\/span>Masters of the Universe<\/em> has a 6.9 on 38K reviews.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Listen, neither <\/span>Ladies First<\/em> nor <\/span>Jack Ryan: Ghost War <\/em>were as pricey as <\/span>Masters of the Universe<\/em>. But they weren\u2019t free either, and <\/span>Ghost War<\/em> looks like it had solid production value, plus it stars a top tier Hollywood talent. Given that it originated from a popular TV show, this underperformance is even worse.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why these films make such good reminders about the real difference between theatrical releases and streaming: one just matters a lot more because it actually moves the buzz needle. The vast majority of streaming films aren\u2019t really bombs or misses or flops; they\u2019re something worse:<\/p>\n

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They\u2019re anonymous.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source entertainment.substack.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what\u2019s popular in streaming TV and what isn\u2019t. I\u2019m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) I just got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2484216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2484215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Two-Streaming-Misses-Make-Mando-Look-Marvelous.com2Fpublic2Fimages2F9bba0acd-6830-43ea-81e4-5d9f5.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2484215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2484217,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484215\/revisions\/2484217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2484216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2484215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2484215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2484215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}