The Falcon and The Winter Soldier becomes Disney+’s biggest ever debut

Disney has found another win with The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.

The company confirmed that the Marvel Studios series ranked as the most-watched series premiere ever on DIsney+ during its opening weekend of March 19-23.

The superhero show’s popularity was not restricted to the superhero obsessed US, with Disney saying that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was also the most-watched title overall for the same period on a global basis. This includes markets where the streamer is offered as Disney+ Hotstar, such as in India.

Indicating the popularity of Disney’s event-style TV series based on existing IP, the company added that the series joined the premieres of Marvel’s previous Disney+ series WandaVision and the season two debut of The Mandalorian as Disney+’s three most-watched original series opening weekends to date.

Disney will hope that this strategy will be reflected for the rest of the year, as it launches high-profile series such as the Tom Hiddlestone-starring Loki in June and Mandalorian spin-off The Book of Boba Fett.

The Falcon and The Winter Soldier reunites two of the most popular characters from the Avengers franchise and stars Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson aka The Falcon, and Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes aka The Winter Soldier. The six-week, six-episode series highlights Disney’s adoption of more traditional event television in the streaming age, versus the tendency of Netflix and Amazon to release all episodes of a show at once.