Sep 14, 2022

"Luck" is the biggest animated bet on Apple TV+ to date, but it has paid off-.

How is the success of the straight-to-streaming animation feature defined - the metric on which Apple films are certainly judged is not the same as the original ones on Netflix, Prime Video, or HBO Max.

insider industry newsletter Puck's Julia Alexander recently collected streaming data for Apple's first Skydance Animation original feature Luck and compared it to what we know about animated films on other platforms to determine if the film was successful on Apple TV+.

Questions about the relative success of straight-to-streaming movies are harder to answer for Apple originals than those of their competitors. Streamer is one of the only major global platforms that refuses to disclose the number of subscribers and does not share streaming data for individual titles.1 Most analysts believe that about 2,500 million people have subscribed to the service.

More broadly, some data we can deal with is available. We know luck never made it to Nielsen's top 10 streaming charts. That's why it wasn't an equivalent hit to a movie like Netflix Sea Beast, which managed to reach 2nd on the list, but outstripped Stranger Things at the time.

According to Nielsen data obtained by Alexander, in its first week on Apple tv+, 220 million Apple customers (over 2 years old) watched Luck in the United States. For the Apple original, it's a decent performance, better than any of the previous 5 movies released on the platform.

2.2 million may be a strong number for Apple's original, but that's just a small part of what the movie can achieve on other, larger platforms. For example, Pixar's Lightyear, the studio's historic box office flop, was watched by about 1200 million people in its first week at Disney+ in the US, and it was after a full theatrical release.

Part of what makes luck so intriguing is the sheer amount of behind-the-scenes drama leading up to its release. The film, which boasts a値札140 million price tag, is an a-list voice cast, Skydance Animation's first animated feature, and John Lasseter's first feature as a producer since Disney's high-profile departure, managing only mixed reviews from critics and audiences.

The conclusion is that it seems tough to see luck as a flop, but we considered everything, but the film was far from a hit. It was better than many of the other original platforms and set a solid foundation for the future of Apple and Skydance to build on, but its large