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Amazon's adaptation of "Fallout" ranks second in the US and fourth globally for 2024, with over 100 million views and 91 million hours watched in just four days. Its binge-worthy release strategy reflects immediate success, hinting at sustained popularity and long-term potential.
Fallout, Amazon's latest big-budget ($153 million) TV series, premiered on April 11th. Available globally, this creation by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy is inspired by the much-beloved Fallout video game series, which now has no fewer than 12 titles to its name.
Fallout draws heavily from Cold War and 80s classics such as ‘Mad Max’, ‘The Postman’, and ‘A Boy and His Dog’ and is credited by many as renewing consumer interest in RPGs.
Adapting games to TV can be a double-edged sword. While having a pre-existing fan-base can guarantee audience, it goes some way to define that audience, as well as restricting show material, setting and tone. Indeed, scriptwriters not respecting the “law” of a series is often cited as the main concern by avid fans.
Fallout (3, 4), as an RPG featuring a protagonist with no set name, build or gender affords far more creativity that most series, with Nolan and Joy able to forge their own path in the post-apocalyptic universe, flavoured by the rich setting, but less restricted by many gaming series with defined characters and story arcs.
Fallout now joins a growing family of quality and successful live-action adaptations including ‘The Last of Us’, ‘Twisted Metal’, ‘Halo’, and ‘The Witcher’ (originally a novel adaptation).
“Fallout has clearly been a resounding success for Prime, receiving widespread acclaim and almost instant renewal for season two.
While the viewing across the first few days of the series has been unprecedented, reaching as high as 45% in some markets, it does remain to be seen how this plays out longer term.
While it clearly took more viewing over its first few days, compared to a per-episode drop such as Reacher. Reacher managed to a 20% share over viewing for just over a month, and maintaining audience is more important for churn reduction than peak viewing”
Fallout, unlike some of Amazon’s other key shows dropped as an entire season, breaking from Amazon’s episodic release schedule observed in its other key shows including ‘The Boys’, ‘The Wheel of Time’, ‘Reacher’ and ‘The Rings of Power’.
As such in terms of individual views (over 2 min) and time spent, Fallout’s opening week has been nothing short of spectacular.
In its domestic market (US) – Fallout took 53m views and 47m hours over its first week (Thursday to Sunday). Compared to next best performing show, ‘The Boys’, which took 28m views and 29m hours during the week of its season finale in July 2022.
Fallout also tipped the scales in terms of unique viewers, with 9.7m US Prime profiles tuning in to watch the show, again comparing favourably to other Prime tentpoles, which saw ‘The Boys’ take 9.1m unique views at its weekly peak, ‘Lord of the Rings’ 7.8m and ‘Reacher’ 6.3m.
Fallout has proved incredibly bingeworthy, with a total of 56m episodes being viewed, for an average of 5.8 episodes per (unique) viewer or 72% of the 8-episode series.
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Outside of the US, Fallout again took a huge share of viewing over its first few days on the platform.
The show took the top spot in the vast majority of Prime markets, with the key exception being India, where sci-fi rom-com movie ‘Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya’ proved a streaming success and Fallout took a more humble 10% of viewing.
In the majority of other markets, Fallout took around 30% of the week’s (Monday to Sunday) viewing share, especially impressive as Fallout’s Thursday launch, limited measured viewing in its first week to just four days.
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Fallout is clearly set to be Amazon’s hit series of 2024, but to put this in context of how big a success the show will be, the series is already the year’s fourth most watched series in Amazon’s top 17 markets, and the second most watched show in the US; achieving this rank in just four days, against almost four months for other titles.
‘Reacher’, which dropped episodes from December to January, just tips the scales at 142m views across Amazons biggest 17 markets. Fallout, in just four days of viewing has surpassed 100m views and 91m hours watched, indicating an extremely high level of interest and completion across a global audience.
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Fallout is undeniably a huge success at launch but as viewing data continues to trickle in over the next week, it will become clear if Fallout’s weekend triumph translates into a longer-term megahit, or a mere (spectacular) flash in the pan.