Hulu has been making targeted investments to build out its animation catalog and recently created a dedicated “Animayhem” hub on its service for its adult animation and anime content. Fox’s “Animation Domination” predates the streaming wars and Hulu is continuing that tradition by leaning into the strength of its animation programming, including many of the long-running shows that formed the cornerstone of Fox’s programming block.
In a sign of how far Hulu has come in its push to dominate the adult animation landscape, eight of the 10 most in-demand adult animation series in the past year were available to stream on Hulu. Six of these were available exclusively on the service. However, the most in-demand adult animated comedy in the U.S. in the past year, “South Park,” was only available to stream on Max.
And two of the top 10 that have ended, “Futurama” and “King of the Hill,” are being rebooted as Hulu originals. These shows stopped running new episodes a decade or more ago, but have remained consistently in demand since then. When it comes to animated comedies — or any comedy, for that matter — long-running classics are often a safer bet. Hulu is looking to capitalize on assets with a proven track record.
Since the new season of “Futurama” premiered on July 24, it has peaked at nearly 80 times the average series demand and ranked as the most in-demand show in the U.S. for multiple days. This bodes well for the upcoming “King of the Hill” reboot.
Hulu’s focus on becoming the go-to place for adult animation fans should be an effective technique for retaining subscribers. If we look at shows that the viewers of “Futurama” also watch, the series with the most overlap are long-running standards of the adult animation genre like “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy” and “Rick and Morty” — all available to stream on Hulu.
With “Rick and Morty,” a rebooted “Futurama,” and the Hulu original “Solar Opposites” (which just released its fourth season on Aug. 14), Hulu appears to have cornered the market on quirky sci-fi animated comedies. Adding shows like this to its catalog likely does more to retain these audiences and keep them engaged on the service than to attract new subscribers — but with Wall Street’s focus shifting to lowering marketing costs and churn, that’s a good direction for Disney, which owns a majority stake in Hulu and operates it, to lean into.
We’ve previously shown how demand for Hulu’s catalog of anime leads other major streamers in the U.S. As an anime specialist, Crunchyroll has the most demand for its deep catalog. It would be a massive undertaking for Hulu to displace it as the go-to streamer for anime fans. Hulu’s strength is in balancing animated comedies and anime to make for a balanced animation destination.
It is also interesting to see that Max had a slight lead over Hulu when considering demand for non-anime adult animation on the service. This is driven in part by Max having the No. 1 and No. 3 most in-demand adult animation series on the service, as well as Adult Swim shows like “Robot Chicken.”
Christofer Hamilton is a senior insights analyst at Parrot Analytics, a WrapPRO partner. For more from Parrot Analytics, visit the Data and Analysis Hub.
