The Devil Wears Prada 2 just claimed the biggest live-action movie premiere in the history of Disney+ and Hulu, pulling in 15.2 million global views in its first five days of streaming, per Deadline.
The movie it dethroned? Deadpool & Wolverine.
So a fashion dramedy sequel built for millennial women just out-premiered the R-rated juggernaut that grossed $1.33 billion worldwide â on Disney’s own service.
On its own, that’s a fun milestone for a movie that already over-performed in theaters.
Put it next to what insiders have been telling me about Disney scrambling to win back the audiences Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Pixar lost, and it becomes something else entirely: public data confirming our exclusives.
The Math Should Scare Disney
Deadpool & Wolverine did $1.33 billion at the worldwide box office. When it hit Disney+ in November 2024, Disney touted 19.4 million views over its first six days, making it the most-watched live-action film on the service since Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 finished its theatrical run with just over $690 million worldwide. That’s barely half of Deadpool’s gross. Yet on the five-day premiere window, Prada 2 came out on top.
Run the numbers, and it gets worse for the capes. Prada 2 delivered roughly 50 percent more premiere views per theatrical dollar than Deadpool & Wolverine, and did it in one less day.
A movie over-performing its box office that hard on streaming isn’t a fluke. It’s telling you who is actually sitting on the platform.
Who Is Actually Watching Disney+ And Hulu: Women
We know exactly who showed up for The Devil Wears Prada 2.
Opening weekend was 76% female and 58% over the age of 35, per PostTrak exit polls, on the way to a $77 million domestic and $233.6 million global debut.
Fortune’s breakdown was even more lopsided: women under 25 made up just 12% of ticket buyers. Men under 25? 2%.
Adult women drove this movie in theaters, and the streaming record shows that same audience is sitting on Disney+ and Hulu waiting for something made for them.
The rest of the Disney+ record book tells the same story.
Inside Out 2 premiered to a monster 30.5 million views in its first five days, nearly double Deadpool & Wolverine.
So the hierarchy on Disney’s own service goes: family animation at the top, millennial-women nostalgia now wearing the live-action crown, and the $1.3 billion male-skewing MCU event getting passed, along with, of course Star Wars.
Third-party data backs it up.
Luminate’s viewership modeling puts Hulu at 56% female, driven by originals like The Handmaid’s Tale, while Disney+’s male lean comes almost entirely from the fanboy shows: Andor and Daredevil: Born Again.
Parrot Analytics found that the majority of Hulu’s revenue comes from female viewers.
In other words, the two halves of the platform are mirror images. The female half is thriving. The male half is the one that collapsed.
This Is Why Marvel And Star Wars Tanked On Disney+
That male half is the exact lane insiders told me has been gutted, with Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Pixar “losing as much as 75% of the audience.”
Star Wars is the cleanest case study.
The Acolyte wasn’t made for the male audience that built the brand, and the female audience it was made for didn’t show up. Canceled after one season.
The Mandalorian proves the audience was there. Two great seasons powered by the male Star Wars faithful, then Season 3 tanked with Jack Black, Lizzo, and too much Baby Yoda cuteness. Lucasfilm took its one bulletproof hit and pointed it at a different audience. No surprise that the movie followed suit.
Marvel ran the same play. The Disney+ slate launched with WandaVision, yet Loki was the ratings king. The audience could not have made it clearer what it wanted.
Marvel skewed the slate female anyway: Hawkeye, She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, Secret Invasion, Echo, Agatha All Along. It all backfired completely.
And those male fans haven’t come back.
Daredevil: Born Again is one of the only shows on the service that still leans male, and it has gone 0-for-17 on Nielsen across two full seasons. The Punisher: One Last Kill missed the charts too.
X-Men ’97 Season 2 is a 10/10 and still can’t chart.
That’s the part Disney needs to understand.
The bad content deserves the blame for driving the male audience off, but the damage has outlived the bad shows. When a 10/10 season can’t buy a Nielsen appearance, the problem isn’t quality anymore. The audience left, and it isn’t checking back in to see if things got fixed.
Marvel movies still open fine on Disney+ because they ride theatrical afterglow. But Marvel’s biggest hit in years just got out-premiered by a movie for the audience Disney still has.
It’s the same shift insiders described when they told me Hollywood is actively de-Marvelizing, with the town betting on exactly the kind of counter-programming Prada 2 represents.
Exactly What Insiders Told Us
This is where the streaming record stops being a fun stat and starts confirming our reporting.
As I exclusively reported, Disney is restructuring around AI, actively looking to rest legacy IP before relaunching it, and eyeing acquisitions â with insiders saying “Lionsgate is not out of the question” â as the company preps for the coming Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery war.
Insiders then spelled out the reason: Disney needs to win back the audiences its biggest brands lost, specifically males and families. That’s why Lionsgate’s John Wick, Saw, The Expendables, horror, and faith-and-family lanes are so attractive to the Mouse.
Disney is shopping for the audience its own record book proves it no longer has at home.
The Prada 2 record is that entire thesis in a single data point. Disney’s biggest live-action streaming premiere ever now belongs to the audience it kept, while the brands built for the audience it lost sit on the bench.
Prada 2 Is Also The Playbook
Here’s the kicker. Remember what insiders said about legacy IP: “They need new material to rest their legacy IP before they relaunch them again.”
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is that playbook executed to perfection. A 20th Century property rested for twenty years, relaunched with the original cast and creative team, opening to $77 million domestic on its way past $690 million worldwide, and now a streaming record on top of it.
That’s the exact model insiders described for Marvel and Star Wars: bench the damaged brands, let them cool off, and bring them back when the audience actually misses them.
Disney just proved its own strategy works. The proof came from the half of the audience that never left.
Winning back the other half is what Lionsgate is for.
