Watchmen is HBO’s highest-rated series premiere in years, Rise of Skywalker breaks pre-sale records

This Sunday, HBO dropped the series premiere of Watchmen, its gutsy new take on Alan Moore’s seminal 1986 comic book about an alternate universe where superheroes are real and have affected the course of history. The show, from Lost creator Damon Lindelof, matches Moore for boldness, immediately diving into issues of racial violence and domestic terrorism. On Watchmen, the liberal Robert Redford has been president for decades, people are disquiet over widespread reparations (or “Redfordations”), a white supremacist group is murdering cops, drugs are legal, squids periodically rain from the sky, and police officer/superhero Sister Night (Regina King) is out to get justice even if it means bending or breaking the rules.

Whatever else Watchmen is, it’s not boring.

And apparently, people are taking to it. Variety reports that viewership for the series premiere, “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice,” was up 21% compared to the season finale of Succession, another buzzed-about new show, the week before. All in all, 1.5 million people tuned in to watch Watchmen. HBO says that viewership on its digital platforms was the best for any of its series premieres since Westworld debuted back in 2016.

Although granted, Westworld’s numbers were stronger, and none of these shows have done anywhere near the stupid-high numbers Game of Thrones did in its later seasons. That may be too much to hope for — Thrones caught on with the public in a way that’s hard to engineer — but in trying to find a worthy successor, HBO is producing some quality television. So far, critics love both Watchmen and Succession, and His Dark Materials is right around the corner.

Also having a banner day is Disney, which dropped the final trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker last night.

The trailer also marked when people could go online to buy advance tickets for the movie, which opens in theaters on December 20. And boy, did they. According to Atom Tickets, first-hour advance ticket sales for The Rise of Skywalker at beat out advance sale for Avengers: Endgame — which you may or may not know is the most profitable movie in the history of ever — by 45%.

So rest easy, everyone: Disney won’t go poor.

But seriously, Disney is murdering it out here. The Rise of Skywalker now holds the record for first-hour advance ticket sales, but the next four movies all come from the House of Mouse, as well: Avengers: Endgame, Avengers: Infinity War, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Star Wars: Rogue One.

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h/t Deadline