The “Knuckles” miniseries on Paramount+ has become the most-watched original series on the platform over its premiere weekend.
Per the streaming service, the “Sonic the Hedgehog” spinoff series was viewed for more than 4 million hours in its first few days of availability after dropping all six episodes on April 26. That also makes it the most-watched kids & family title ever on Paramount+. Viewership for other “Sonic the Hedgehog” titles on the service also saw a substantial lift, up 278% over their daily average.
“The ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ fans came out in full-force,” said Jeff Grossman, executive vice president of programming at Paramount+. “We’re so thrilled with the record-breaking performance of ‘Knuckles’ and the incredible lift the whole Sonic universe has experienced following ‘Knuckles” premiere.”
Paramount+ does not typically release information on the number of viewers for its titles, though they previously revealed such info for the show “Special Ops: Lioness,” which also aired partially on the linear Paramount Network, while “Knuckles” is solely a streaming title. If one were to apply the Netflix approach of dividing total time viewed by total run time (approximately 166 minutes in the case of “Knuckles”), that comes out to approximately 1.45 million viewers for “Knuckles” over the weekend.
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“Knuckles” saw Idris Elba reprise the voice role of the title character, whom 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,” per 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 reprised his role as Sonic, while Tika Sumpter reprised 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 ran the show during production and executive produced. Whittington co-wrote “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” and served as head writer and wrote the pilot for the series. Additional series writers include Brian Schacter and James Madejski. Jeff Fowler, who directed both “Sonic the Hedgehog” films, directed the pilot episode and executive produced the series. Neal H. Moritz of Original Film and Haruki Satomi, Shuji Utsumi, and Toru Nakahara — all members of the films’ creative team — served as executive producers, as does Elba. Ged Wright, Brandon Trost, Jorma Taccone, and Carol Banker also directed episodes. Paramount Pictures and Sega of America produce.
