The annual “May the 4th Be With You” marketing event also known as Star Wars Day helped two of the franchise’s spinoffs dominate Parrot Analytics’ weekly list of the most in-demand digital original television shows the week ended May 9.
The Disney+ animated series “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” not only remained No. 1 on Parrot Analytics’ digital originals rankings for a third-consecutive week, it stayed atop the data firm’s overall list of TV series from any platform for a second week.
And the live-action series “The Mandalorian” climbed a spot to No. 2 on the digital originals list following a number of developments surrounding the upcoming second season of the series.
A “digital original” is Parrot’s term for a multi-episode series in which the most recent season was first made available on a streaming platform such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu or Disney+.
The seventh and final season of “The Clone Wars,” available exclusively on Disney+, finished its run with a couple of the most-talked about episodes in the series’ history as the show chronicled how popular character Ahsoka Tano dealt with Order 66, the command to wipe out the Jedi seen in Revenge of the Sith. With the finale debuting on May 4 to coincide with Star Wars Day, “Clone Wars” registered a massive 139.9 million average daily Demand Expressions, the proprietary metric used by Parrot Analytics to measure global demand for TV content, up 43.7% from the previous week.
“The Mandalorian” was up 25.2% in expressions to 62.3 million after receiving its own May the 4th boost from a couple of sources. First, Disney+ premiered a new documentary series called “Disney Gallery: Star Wars — The Mandalorian” to chronicle the making of the first season, with the first two of eight episodes available May 4 and 8, respectively. Also May 4, director Robert Rodriguez tweeted a picture of himself with the famous “Baby Yoda” puppet (officially known as The Child) to confirm he was directing a season two episode. Then on May 8 reports began swirling that actor Temuera Morrison, who played bounty hunter Jango Fett and the clone troopers in the prequel movies, would be playing fan-favorite bounty hunter Boba Fett on “The Mandalorian.”
The prequels established Boba was cloned from Jango to be raised as his son as payment for Jango serving as the template for the clone army, and Morrison previously voiced Boba while re-recording dialogue for the DVD special edition of The Empire Strikes Back. Boba Fett supposedly died in Return of the Jedi, but the notion that he survived has been a part of expanded “Star Wars” fiction in comic books and novels since shortly after that movie came out in 1983. There is some speculation that Morrison could also be playing Rex, a former clone trooper who abandoned the rising Empire during Order 66 (as depicted on “Clone Wars”) and is a close associate of Ahsoka (who was previously reported to be appearing on “The Mandalorian” to be played by Rosario Dawson).
Netflix’s “Stranger Things” dropped to No. 3 on the digital originals chart, down 1.5% from the previous week to 57.9 million expressions.
Holding steady at No. 4 was the Netflix crime drama “Money Heist,” known internationally as “La Casa de Papel,” with expressions down 9.1% to 44.3 million.
The superhero series “Titans,” a chart mainstay from the DC Universe streaming service, ticked up a spot to take No. 5 for the week with 41 million expressions, up 1.2% from the previous week.
Another DC Universe series, the animated “Harley Quinn,” rose six spots to No. 6, with expressions up 15.6% to 37.7 million. The show is in the midst of its second season and its first season was recently announced for a June 2 DVD release.
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The Demand Expressions metric draws from a wide variety of data sources, including video streaming, social media activity, photo sharing, blogging, commenting on fan and critic rating platforms, and downloading and streaming via peer-to-peer protocols and file sharing sites.
Media Play News has teamed with Parrot Analytics to provide readers with a weekly top 10 of the most popular digital original TV series in the United States, based on the firm’s proprietary metric called Demand Expressions, which measures global demand for TV content through a wide variety of data sources, including video streaming, social media activity, photo sharing, blogging, commenting on fan and critic rating platforms, and downloading and streaming via peer-to-peer protocols and file sharing sites.
