Shōgun seems to be the show of the moment. Riding the high of glowing reviews and positive word-of-mouth, the FX series' two-episode premiere pulled in 9 million views across Hulu, Disney+, and Star+ in its first six days of availability, Disney announced yesterday.
That's enough to become an FX series' biggest premiere on Hulu in the U.S., surpassing The Bear Season 2. It's also the No. 1 series premiere internationally for a scripted show from Disney General Entertainment, a group that includes FX, ABC, Disney Channel, Freeform, and more.
An important caveat, however, is that that 9 million number includes viewership from Hulu on Disney+, the company's new bundle of the two streaming services. In fact, Disney said that Shōgun premiered "just" ahead of The Bear Season 2 thanks to that extra viewership.
That "views" metric is defined as total stream time divided by runtime, and has been the one most commonly used lately by streaming companies like Netflix, who popularized it.
Shōgun Takes Off
Shōgun's premiere numbers are pretty impressive when measured by another metric too. According to numbers provided to IGN by audience data company Samba TV, 1.8 million U.S. households watched the first episode of Shōgun on Hulu during its first five days of availability. The second episode, meanwhile, was viewed by 1.1 million U.S. households on Hulu.
Per Samba's measurements, that puts it past the Season 2 premiere of Reacher (1.7 million U.S. households in first five days on Prime Video) and the first episodes of Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender (1.4 million U.S. households in first five days) and One Piece (986k U.S. households in first five days).
If all those different metrics are a bit confusing, just know that they all point to a strong start for Shōgun. The historical drama series, based on the 1975 novel of the same name by James Clavell, is now airing on Tuesdays on FX and Hulu following its two-episode premiere.
IGN gave all 10 episodes of Shōgun a 10/10, with Samantha Nelson writing that it "places characters over combat for a complex and beautiful tale of intrigue set in feudal Japan."
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she's not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
