‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ Joins ‘Stranger Things’ & ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ In Claiming Opening Weekend Record

Nellie Andreeva
·2 min read
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It was a clash of the titans over Memorial Day weekend with three mega franchises, Stranger Things, Star Wars and Top Gun, unspooling new installments on streaming platforms and in theaters. All three are claiming record showings, with two, Netflix’s Stranger Things and Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick, providing numbers to back up their statements.

Disney+ announced today that new series Obi-Wan Kenobi is the most-watched Disney+ original series premiere globally to date, based on hours streamed in an opening weekend. No data was released to support the claim. The streamer also noted that, immediately following the Obi-Wan Kenobi series premiere launch, Star Wars title viewership on Disney+ tripled in hours-watched during opening weekend.

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Stranger Things 4 Volume 1, which launched May 25, logged the biggest premiere weekend ever for a Netflix original series with 286.79 million hours viewed over the weekend, the streamer said today. The new installment also lifted the series’ previous seasons, which ranked No.3-5 on Netflix’s weekly global Top 10 for English-language series.

Meanwhile, Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick set a new Memorial Day opening record With $160M+ in the boxoffice proving that big streaming and theatrical premieres can successfully co-exist without cannibalizing each other.

We will get a sense how Obi-Wan Kenobi’s debut measured up against Stranger Things’ when Nielsen releases their data in a couple of weeks. The comparison is not apples to apples as Netflix’s global universe of subscribers is still significantly larger than that of Disney+, which has been gaining on its main rival over the last few quarters. Additionally, Stranger Things released seven episodes (Volume 1) of its fourth season this past weekend while Obi-Wan Kenobi only put out two as Disney+ is adhering to a more traditional weekly rollout for its shows.

Obi-Wan Kenobi stars Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Moses Ingram, Bonnie Piesse, Rupert Friend, Indira Varma, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Simone Kessell, Benny Safdie, Jimmy Smits and Vivien Lyra Blair. The series comes from director/executive producer Deborah Chow and executive producers Michelle Rejwan and Joby Harold.

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