The “Knuckles” miniseries on Paramount+ became the most-watched original series on the platform during its premiere weekend.
According to the streaming service, the spinoff series “Sonic the Hedgehog” was watched more than 4 million hours during its first few days of availability after all six episodes were dropped on April 26. That also makes it the most-watched kids and family title ever on Paramount+. Viewership for other “Sonic the Hedgehog” titles on the service also saw significant increases, up 278% over the daily average.
“The ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ fans came out in full force,” said Jeff Grossman, executive vice president of programming at Paramount+. “We are so excited about the record-breaking performance of ‘Knuckles’ and the incredible lift the entire Sonic universe has experienced following the premiere of ‘Knuckles’.”
Paramount+ does not typically release viewership information for its titles, although they previously revealed such information for the show “Special Ops: Lioness,” which also aired partially on the linear Paramount Network, while “Knuckles” is exclusively a streaming title. . If you were to take the Netflix approach of dividing the total time watched by the total running time (about 166 minutes in the case of “Knuckles”), that equates to about 1.45 million viewers for “Knuckles” over the weekend.
‘Knuckles’ saw Idris Elba reprise the voice role of the title character, which he first played in the film ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 2’, with the events of the series taking place after that film but before the upcoming ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 3’ . The series is said to follow Knuckles “on a hilarious and action-packed journey of self-discovery as he agrees to train Wade (Adam Pally) as his protégé and teach him the ways of the Echidna warrior,” according to the official logline .
The cast also includes guest stars Stockard Channing, Edi Patterson, Scott Mescudi, Ellie Taylor, Julian Barratt, Rory McCann, Cary Elwes, Christopher Lloyd, Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel. Ben Schwartz reprized his role as Sonic, while Tika Sumpter reprized her role as Maddie. Colleen O’Shaughnessey also returned as a special guest star in her role as Tails.
The series was created for television by John Whittington and Toby Ascher, who led the show’s production and executive production. Whittington co-wrote “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” served as head writer and wrote the pilot for the series. Other series writers include Brian Schacter and James Madejski. Jeff Fowler, who directed both “Sonic the Hedgehog” films, directed the pilot episode and produced the series. Original Film’s Neal H. Moritz and Haruki Satomi, Shuji Utsumi and Toru Nakahara – all members of the film’s creative team – served as executive producers, as did Elba. Ged Wright, Brandon Trost, Jorma Taccone and Carol Banker also directed episodes. Paramount Pictures and Sega of America are producing.
