Thor: Love and Thunder Massive Hit for Disney+, 3-Times Elvis' Debut on HBO Max
Thor: Love and Thunder made a splash at the multiplex when it debuted earlier this year, with a worldwide box office of $760 million, the best thus far for a Thor movie. Love and Thunder also managed to thrive on streaming once it arrived on Disney+ last month — and newly-released numbers reveal just how much that was the case. According to new metrics released by Nielsen, Love and Thunder generated 1.5 billion minutes viewed in the United States during its first four days on Disney+, September 8th-11th. By comparison, that's three times the number surrounding Elvis' debut on HBO Max, which had 482 million minutes streamed in the same amount of time.
Thor: Love and Thunder finds Thor (Chris Hemsworth) on a journey unlike anything he's ever faced – a quest for inner peace. But his retirement is interrupted by a galactic killer known as Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), who seeks the extinction of the gods. To combat the threat, Thor enlists the help of King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi) and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who – to Thor's surprise – inexplicably wields his magical hammer, Mjolnir, as the Mighty Thor. Together, they embark upon a harrowing cosmic adventure to uncover the mystery of the God Butcher's vengeance and stop him before it's too late.
"[Taika] would flip through and read that run while he was doing Ragnarok." Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige previously revealed in an interview. "And I think when he agreed to come back and do another Thor, he was like, 'How do we–?' This is a very big movie that'll be folding in a lot of elements. That is a hugely important part of it. He pitched it to us, and we were totally in. We loved it. We'd been in touch with Natalie. She's part of the MCU family and we put she and Taika together. It took one meeting and she agreed to do it."
While Marvel Studios has yet to officially greenlight a fifth Thor film, these impressive numbers will definitely beg the question of when and how the MCU will pick up with Love and Thunder's characters next.
What do you think of Thor: Love and Thunder's performance on Disney+? Do you hope it leads to Thor 5? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!