Sony’s YouTube subscribers nearly triple after Interview release — and other early stats

Sony probably never thought a lighthearted stoner comedy, The Interview, would become the center of an International incident with a nuclear-armed dictator. Mathematically speaking, Sony probably got about a bazillion times more coverage than it had anticipated. After initially capitulating to purported North Korean hackers’ demands to scrap The Interview‘s holiday debut, Sony decided to stream the movie online.

Its release to popular movie streaming services such as Youtube made national headlines. While we don’t know how many people purchased the movie online, there are some early numbers that make it seem like releasing the movie was a very good idea.

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Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Youtube subscribers nearly tripped, skyrocketing from 173,000 on December 23 to 416,000 on the day after Christmas — and still growing.

The Interview pulled in an estimated $1 million at the box office over Christmas. At first blush, that seems like a weak pull compared to the $15 million that Unbroken made. But it was also in an order-of-magnitude fewer theaters. When graphed on revenue per theater, it did much better:

Those who didn’t bother to rent or go the theaters probably torrented The Interview. At least 750,000 downloaded the movie in the past 48 hours, according to early estimates of the number of users downloading/seeding it online.

We’ll update readers as more stats come in.