'The Tomorrow War' Was Apparently A Big Hit For Amazon
Amazon's The Tomorrow War — a sci-fi action flick starring Chris Pratt, a swol J. K. Simmons, and murderous aliens called White Spikes — got a lot of eyeballs last month.
According to the latest Nielsen ratings, The Tomorrow War got the top spot for streamed features the week of June 28 to July 4, with 1.22 billion minutes clocked. That's right, over a billion minutes!
One Billion, 220 Million Minutes. How Do You Measure, Measure A Hit?
With viewed streaming minutes in the billions, and The Tomorrow War clocking in at a too-long 138 minutes, the movie garnered millions of viewers. (8.8 million or so if you divide the total streaming minutes by the movie's length, though some folks assuredly didn't watch the whole thing.)
Nielsen also only covers U.S. viewership, and since The Tomorrow War dropped on Amazon's streaming platform in 240 countries worldwide, the total viewership is undoubtedly much higher.
With these numbers, The Tomorrow War is clearly a hit for Amazon. The streaming platform, which paid $200 million for the film, pushed the movie hard. There were on-the-ground campaigns where "real" White Walkers drove around major cities, a fancy world premiere in Los Angeles, and oodles of marketing material on Amazon boxes.
All that marketing apparently paid off and further solidified Amazon as a contender in the feature space. The movie premiering on July 2, the start of the 4th of July holiday weekend, probably didn't hurt either. Whether the movie is any good...maybe? It's a very dumb movie, but also not horrible to watch if you don't take it too seriously.
Come for The Tomorrow War, Stay for Tomorrow’s Tomorrow War
Amazon was apparently so pleased with The Tomorrow War numbers that they already greenlit a sequel to the film. Director Chris McKay and Pratt are expected to be back for the sequel as well.
Will Pratt have to save the world just to save his daughter...again? Will the White Spikes be back in the future or maybe (plot twist!) travel to the past somehow and wreak havoc there? Who knows at this point, though it's fair to guess that Amazon is clearly hoping this will be a tentpole franchise that keeps getting those billion-plus streaming minutes.
No news yet on when The Tomorrow War 2 will come out on Amazon. You can catch the first movie right now on Amazon Prime Video.