Critically the latest entry to the franchise set in a galaxy far, far away has raised praise and Star Wars fans all mostly seem to be positive on the series. However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows as Skeleton Crew has failed to enter the top ten streaming originals chart for two weeks in a row as reported by Variety, a disappointing result for the studio and fans hoping to see the latest Star Wars series succeed.
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Following the release of the series premiere, which consisted of two episodes, Variety shared their top ten streaming originals chart, a chart that consists only of series created exclusively for streaming and not for series that also receive broadcasts on network television – series such as Yellowstone and The Penguin for example would not be allowed to chart despite also airing on Peacock and Max. The lowest entry, number ten, was Peacock’s The Day of the Jackal which came in that week with a total of 332 million minutes watched. This means that Skeleton Crew received less than 332 million minutes watched across its first two episodes during that week.
When you apply the Disney+/Netflix method at the the lowest entry on the Streaming Originals Chart, 332 million minutes, and divide it by the runtime of Skeleton Crew’s first two episodes – 75 minutes, you got get 4.2 million views. But of course the number would be lower as this is simply taking the minutes watched of The Day of the Jackal.
I was hoping that we’d see Skeleton Crew crack Variety’s top ten streaming originals chart in the series’ second week, especially given that some series that featured in the week before had ended, but unfortunately it was not the case.
The Day of the Jackal remained placed in the number ten position, but with almost 50 million less minutes watched than the week prior. The Day of the Jackal landed in the number ten spot with 288 million minutes watched, meaning that Skeleton Crew in its second week, the week of the release of the series third episode, failed to reach 288 minutes watched.
Again, if you apply the method used by Disney+ and Netflix, the minutes watched divided by the runtime, you’re left with around 2.4 million views if you use The Day of the Jackal’s 288 million minutes, the minimum that was needed to break the streaming originals top ten. That figure is based on the entire runtime of the Disney+ series so far, 112 minutes. The Variety streaming chart and Nielsen both include all episodes released in their data.
I’m sure some would argue that most of the data for that week would likely be for the latest episode, and that’s possibly true, but that could be said for all the other series that actually made it onto the streaming originals chart which was topped by the Paramount+ series Landman which had garnered 1.2 billion minutes watched – when divided by the total runtime of the episodes so far (5 episodes), 275 minutes, Landman claims the top spot with around 4.3 million minutes watched. However, the chart tracks from Friday to Thursday evening, meaning the latest chart would’ve began tracking four days after the release of Skeleton Crew’s first two episodes and included three days of tracking on Skeleton Crew’s third episode – December 6th to December 12th. So it is only fair to include the total runtime of the all the episodes released thus far.
The viewership data is really disappointing to see, especially as a Star Wars fan and somebody that is enjoying Skeleton Crew. No live-action Star Wars series has failed to enter streaming originals chart during their first and second weeks. The only Star Wars live-action series that ever failed to chart before Skeleton Crew was The Acolyte, but that was only from its fourth episode, The Acolyte charted for its first three episodes, fell out for multiple weeks and re-charted following the release of its eighth and final episode.
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