Less than a month after Beauty And The Beast’s first trailer broke the record for most views in 24 hours a record that was previously held by 50 Shades Darker—Fate Of The Furious has burst into the running with a jacked-up muscle car and smashed the record once again. This comes from Deadline, which says Beauty And The Beast had managed to get 127.6 million views in its first day, but Fate Of The Furious topped it with 139 million views for Sunday’s betrayal-heavy teaser.
Pulling that off required Universal to put together an appropriately Fast And Furious-esque scheme, with the movie’s stars showing up for a “historic Times Square takeover” that involved showing the trailer on 33 digital billboards at the same time, a Facebook live event, and a premiere during NBC’s Football Night In America, which also happened to be the most-watched primetime football game of the year. Combine that stuff with the totals from YouTube and the many people who watched it through Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson’s social media feeds, and it probably reached those 139 million views pretty easily.
Deadline’s breakdown also helps explain why so many trailers are managing to break this record now, since it goes way beyond the number of people who watch something on YouTube. Studios are probably in the middle of an arms race to find a way to top Fate Of The Furious’ record already, which means it’s just a matter of time before someone puts a TV screen in space and gets everyone on the Earth to watch their trailer.