Barbie can add another win to its list of successes since hitting theaters over the summer.
After arriving on Max on December 15, 1.2 million U.S. households watched Barbie in its first four days on the service, according to data from television technology company, Samba TV.
In comparison, 205,000 U.S. households watched Barbie in its first four days on VOD in September.
The contrast between the two numbers isn’t a total surprise. Max subscribers only needed to wait and watch the movie for free. If you wanted to watch Barbie on Prime Video or Redbox, you’d have to pay upwards of $30. But the large number of streams underscores the continued popularity of the film.
Barbie’s performance was also strong compared with another recent Max release, Blue Beetle. The DC superhero film, which performed poorly at the box office, garnered 727,000 U.S. households views in the first three days of release, according to Samba. Avatar: The Way of Water, which streamed on both Disney+ and Max, garnered 2.6 million over a five-day stretch, Samba TV said.
The movie, directed by Greta Gerwig, followed the iconic dolls, Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling) on a hilarious, yet insightful, journey of self discovery. The cast included talents like America Ferrara, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Simu Liu, and Will Farrell.
Barbie smashed box office records as Warner Bros.’s highest-grossing global release in the studio’s 100-year history, raking in over $1.44 billion worldwide, as well as the 15th highest-grossing film of all time and the highest-grossing film by a female director.
Barbie shared its opening weekend with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a drastically different film about the development of the atomic bomb. What could’ve been a bitter divide between the two movies instead created the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon with thousands of people buying tickets in advance to see both films on the same day.
If you want to watch Barbie on Max, you can subscribe to the service for $9.99 a month with ads, $15.99 a month with no ads, or $19.99 a month to get extra features like more simultaneous streams and 4K HD video quality.