‘Masters of the Universe’ Is a Massive Hit on Streaming

He-Man didn’t have the power in the theaters, but he sure has the power on your couch. Nielsen just released its streaming rankings for the week of July 20-26, and the most-watched show or movie on any streaming service was Travis Knight’s Masters of the Universe on Prime Video. Masters of the Universe released in theaters on June 5 and debuted on Prime mere weeks later, on July 22. But that short window seems to have paid off, as people watched the film for 1.17 billion minutes during its first week on streaming. Now, of course, that adds up to a lot of small doses and such, but for a movie that runs about 140 minutes, that’s about 8.4 million people watching the full movie in a week. If you pretend each one of them paid $15 for a movie ticket, you’re looking at a $125 million gross. The only other thing that came close to Masters of the Universe that week was The Big Bang Theory, which spread its insanely impressive 1.12 billion minutes over 281 episodes on HBO Max. And that happened over the course of the full week. Masters had two fewer days. Now, does this totally redeem the film from its box office failure? Of course not. At the box office, Masters of the Universe grossed $114 million globally against a production budget of $170 million, plus whatever the marketing cost. So it did very poorly. What this tells us, though, is that people were curious enough to watch it but not curious enough to head to a theater to see it. Whether that’s a failure of the marketing or the movie itself can certainly be debated. Maybe people watched it on Prime because of its financial failure. Whatever the case, this is undoubtedly a huge win for the film’s second life in the home market. Plus, it has to feel good for everyone involved, who obviously put their heart and soul into the movie. We didn’t hate Masters of the Universe, but we didn’t love it either. It had some problems but also a whole lot of passion and good ideas. Maybe we’ll add to those billion minutes this week and give it a second chance. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.