2024 Streaming Hits Point Way to Post-Peak TV IP Strategy

For the legions of creatives and industry observers looking for clarity in the post-peak TV environment, the contours of a new landscape are beginning to emerge.

The TV industry’s morph into full blockbuster mode — a transformation that’s been underway for a while — seems to be solidifying. Amazon’s big-budget game adaptation “Fallout” recently became the second most watched Prime Video title ever in just over two weeks of release, behind only TV’s first billion-dollar series, “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.”

Meanwhile, over on Paramount+, “Cinematic World of Sonic the Hedgehog” expansion “Knuckles” attained the highest viewing time across its first three days of release of any Paramount+ original series, with more than 4 million hours streamed according to both a press release and Luminate streaming viewership data.

Nor is “Knuckles” the only video game adaptation to thrive on the service. The two seasons of “Halo” account for almost 20% of original series viewing time on Paramount+ this year to date, per Luminate, with more than 64 million hours watched between them.

With “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” having set a new high score for video game adaptations at the box office last year, is the lesson here that gaming properties are becoming the new superheroes in Hollywood?

You could certainly draw that conclusion, but a broader look at the landscape reveals a more nuanced picture.

One of the year’s first major streaming successes was “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” on Disney+, an adaptation of a YA book series with a passionate fanbase. “Percy Jackson” accounts for nearly a quarter of Disney+ original series viewing time so far in 2024, nearly doubling the share of the second-place series (Marvel’s “Echo”).

It’s also one of the streamer’s few success stories not tied to Marvel or “Star Wars,” as most of Disney’s other attempts to leverage its catalogue for SVOD series fell flat.

With this in mind, the lesson of the year in streaming thus far is the one embodied not just by “Mario” but by “Barbie” — as well as the underperformance of the latest “Fast & Furious,” “Indiana Jones” and “Mission: Impossible” entries — at the multiplex last year: Audiences are craving adaptations of IP they haven’t seen on the big screen five or six or 10 times already.

While the “Percy Jackson” book series had been adapted for the screen previously, with two films released between 2010 and 2013, the poor reception of those, not to mention the decade-long gap between the second film and the TV series, made the property ripe for re-adaptation.

Even “Ted” on Peacock, based on the 2012 comedy film and its 2015 sequel, reinforces this takeaway. The series, recently renewed for a second season, is Peacock’s most watched original title to date, according to the streamer, and has racked up nearly 950 million minutes streamed since its release, per Luminate.

No principle is absolute when it comes to content, of course. Amazon’s aforementioned “Lord of the Rings” did just fine despite three “Rings” movies and three “Hobbit” prequel films coming before it, though it will be interesting to see how the second season of “The Rings of Power” performs when it rolls out later this year (not to mention Warner Bros.’ just-announced theatrical franchise extension, if and when that ever arrives).

But as the TV industry reshapes over the next few years, executives in the position to greenlight new series should consider whether they’d be better served by extending an already tired franchise or seeking out fresher IP to help start a new one.

The data certainly favors the latter approach, though, as the success of wholly original series “Baby Reindeer” on Netflix proves, that age-old Hollywood truism remains as solid as ever: Nobody knows anything.