Following the death of Pope Francis on Monday, those at home tuned in significantly to two papal movies: Focus Features’ Oscar winner Conclave and Netflix’s three-time Oscar-nominated The Two Popes.
Luminate data reports an increase in U.S. streaming viewership for Conclave on all platforms between April 20-21, of 283%, with 1.8 million minutes watched and 6.9M minutes watched on each day. The Edward Berger-directed movie is a fictional account of the election process after a Pope dies, with Ralph Fiennes playing a key cardinal in the mix.
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The movie won an Oscar this year for Peter Straughn’s Adapted Screenplay. The movie, financed by FilmNation and distributed stateside by Focus, was also a huge title around the world earning more than $115M on a $20M production cost.
Some comps on Conclave‘s viewership per Luminate: The movie had daily viewership of 1.7M minutes watched in the U.S. during the tracking week April 11-17. So on Monday it saw over 5M more minutes watched than the average day last week.
The Two Popes, which follows Pope Benedict XVI ceding the head of church to Pope Francis, saw its U.S. viewership soar by 417% over the same two days with 290,000 minutes watched on April 20 and 1.5M minutes watched April 21. The 2019 movie, which starred Jonathan Pryce as Pope Francis and Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict, earned Oscar nominations for Pryce as Best Actor, Hopkins for Supporting Actor and Adapted Screenplay for Anthony McCarten.