I really, really tried to watch IT: WELCOME TO DERRY in the wake of its premiere last Sunday night. I’ll confess I’m anything but a lover of horror, which especially on a day like today makes me a wet blanket and a half. I fully respect and acknowledge that there are plenty of people who feel otherwise, and an awful lot of them fall into the most desirable demographic and engagement buckets. But at least for me, these days life in general is scary enough.
Well, I finally did take a gander and, sure enough, it scared the literal sh-t out of me. I’ll leave it to THE WRAP’s Jason Bryant to help explain why:
If the “It: Welcome to Derry” premiere felt bloodier or more intense than the two movies, well that was by design.
The new HBO series takes place in 1962 — which is the monster’s 27-year cycle before the Losers Club face off against him in the 2017 film — and starts with a bloody bang. The first 10 minutes follow a boy trying to hitchhike out of town and getting picked up by a family who turn out to be the shapeshifting monster. A pair of creepy kids and a mother giving birth to a horrific, imp-like monster makes short work of the kid and clues viewers in to expect more intensity and violence than even the movie pulled off.
As someone who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into watching the 1990 miniseries that first adapted the hit Stephen King novel at a time when it was all the more necessary for my career trajectory to do so, and as someone who went out of their way to avoid the 2017 theatrical that established Bill Skarsgard;s Pennywise as a iconic Hallowen symbol worthy of joining Jack Skellington as an overpriced Home Depot animatronic, I wasn’t the best target in the first place. Fortunately for HBO, I appear to be an outlier, as Bryant’s ratings-obsessed colleague Loree Seitz shared yesterday:
“It: Welcome to Derry” frightened an impressive audience with its series premiere on Sunday night, which landed the “It” prequel series within the top three show debuts on HBO Max to date.
The premiere episode garnered 5.7 million viewers within three days of viewing the U.S., according to multiplatform viewing data across HBO and HBO Max. This gave “It: Welcome to Derry” the third most-watched series debut on HBO Max, behind only “Game of Thrones” spinoff “House of the Dragon” and “The Last of Us.”
Episode 1 of “It: Welcome to Derry” drummed up a bigger audience than its HBO Sunday night predecessor “Task,” which debuted to 3.1 million viewers and closed out its seven-episode run with 4 million viewers tuning in for its finale, both within three days of viewing.
Excellent and timely news for the platform, especially in light of the drama that’s been unfolding in their reality this week, a point the prolific Matthew Keys of THE DESK.NET brought to light in a titillating piece he authored on Tuesday:
An aggressive plan by Paramount Global to acquire the assets of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) would largely keep the latter company intact at a time when it is trying to spin off its cable networks business — but that doesn’t mean Paramount intends to continue operating separate consumer-facing services.
On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Paramount CEO David Ellison wants to keep CNN, Cartoon Network, Discovery Channel, TNT and other WBD-owned cable networks in the family, should executives at WBD come around to his offers.
When it comes to streaming, the plan is different: Ellison wants to consolidate WBD’s streaming platform HBO Max into Paramount Plus, which offers content from rival multiplex network Showtime in addition to shows and movies from CBS, Comedy Central, MTV and other Paramount brands.
The fact that IT (:WTD) was a Sunday night HBO original is what got someone like me to even try and sample it. The power of the HBO brand is still significant–a fact that its czar for the moment David Zaslav and his lackeys learned the hard way through several expensive and exhaustive attempts to kill it in a manner which Pennywise might have had a few extra chortles over. We’ve mused about that a lot, and not necessarily in a complimentary way.
And it’s not as if Ellison has bought beachfront property that has any sort of alliance to its rival. You may remember how Paramount handled that nomenclature decision earlier this year. It didn’t exactly show them any more aware or respectful than their competition.
Keys brought to light some compelling data points to back up his viewpoint that he’s not exactly covering Ellison in glory with this call on his ever-engaging LinkedIn feed:
This would be an unusual move, and potentially unwise: HBO Max is the stronger global earner of the two:
👤 Paramount Plus has 78 million global subscribers
👤 Paramount Plus is available in 45 countries and territories
👤 Paramount Plus earned $2.18 billion during Q2
By comparison…
📈 WBD has more than 125 million global subscribers, mostly to HBO Max
📈 HBO Max (or Max) is available in 90 countries and territories
📈 WBD earned $2.8 billion in global streaming revenue during Q2
But he did offer a very viable way to at least show enough respect to Ellison’s seeming hubris that in light of some recent “right-sizing” departures of internal braintrust should be worthy of more than just passing acknowledgment:
If Ellison is set on acquiring WBD and merging the apps, it would be better to start overseas where Paramount resonates more with consumers than HBO while moving more cautiously in the U.S. market.
And considering that it’s that international component where pratically all of that upside has been eminating from that is making WBD all the more desirable to potential competitors, as THE ANKLER’s Sean McNulty astutely noted in yesterday’s THE WAKEUP, Ellison and team should at bare minimum be floating this theory in front of a sufficiently sized sample of current and aspirational non-U.S. consumers and building said findings into his appeal to shareholders. A good businessman occasionally does use something else besides Daddy’s megabucks and political connections to make his case–particularly at a time when an equally auspiced competitor with arguably a lot more need for an HBO halo is currying favor and sucking up to said connections.
I sure hope someone left on his team is paying attention to these sort of exchanges. Again, if they’re a little short on immediately available talent to execute this in a timely and cost-effective manner, my hand, not to mention those of dozens of others who have hit the open market more recently, are raised.
If not…well…that to me is REALLY scary.
Until next time…