Olivia Wilde’s New Film Is Hitting Exceptional Streaming Counts
Don't Worry Darling has been viewed by 2.7 million households in its first week.
Don’t Worry Darling, the latest directorial effort of Olivia Wilde, is tearing up the streaming charts. According to Deadline, the film has been viewed in 2.7 million households on Smart TVs and mobile devices in its first week on HBO Max. These numbers are on top of a fairly successful theater run, that saw the film bring in $87 million at the worldwide box office.
Don’t Worry Darling is the latest release on HBO Max’s platform that follows Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s mandate to send their movies to theaters before bringing them to the streaming platform. Previously, especially during times late pandemic-era releases, HBO Max would release major films on the platform the same day they were released in theaters. It appears that under the new regime, HBO Max subscribers can probably count on that not happening again.
In the case of Don’t Worry Darling, it seems like this strategy has worked in their favor. Along with the decent box office return, the impressive streaming numbers are nothing to sneeze at. Presumably, those numbers will continue to grow as the movie enters its second week of being available on the platform.
Although Don’t Worry Darling did fairly well at the theaters and on HBO Max, the critical reception was less than favorable. The movie currently holds a 38% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences look at the film a little more kindly, as it currently has a 74% audience score on the review aggregation platform.
Don’t Worry Darling followed a 1950s housewife and her husband as they live in a utopian experimental community that houses the men who work for the Victory Project. Their life of glamour is thrown awry when the company turns out to be hiding some unsavory secrets. The film was the second full-length feature from actor-director Olivia Wilde, who quickly gained critical acclaim for her skills behind the camera with her directorial debut Booksmart in 2019.
Don’t Worry Darling starred Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde, Kiki Layne, Gemma Chan, Nick Kroll, Kate Berlant, Asif Ali, Sydney Chandler, and more. Florence Pugh’s performance was widely praised, but the film was determined to be a little predictable by audiences. Despite the complaints, it seems like the film is doing just fine as far as popularity goes.
We’ll have to wait and see if HBO’s strategy to release films in theaters first and stream at a later date continues to work out for them. The next big blockbuster film that will go through a similar model with be Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam. Although Don’t Worry Darling made good money for a drama-thriller, it certainly doesn’t compare to the money that a superhero movie brings in at the box office.
Black Adam has already raked in $352 million worldwide and counting, and the streaming numbers will almost certainly be big when it does hit HBO Max. There’s no word on an official release date, but it does seem like this part of Zaslav’s strategy is working — for now. You can now check out Don’t Worry Darling on HBO Max if you missed it.
