Judging from the social media reaction during the broadcast of Lifetime’s original movie Toni Braxton: Unbreak My Heart, it seemed as though the network had a bonafide hit on their hands.
As the saying goes, ‘numbers don’t lie’ and the numbers for the Saturday night debut of the network’s biopic of the superstar singer are in the books and they are looking pretty good.
According to Nielsen’s ratings, Unbreak My Heart, led by newcomer Lex Scott, pulled in about 3.6 million viewers to rank as the station’s most watched movie in a year. No movie has pulled those numbers for the network since the January 2015 premiere of the Whitney Houston biopic, Whitney, which drew in an estimated 4.5 million viewers.
Luckily for Lifetime, the ratings bonanza didn’t stop with the movie.
Immediately following the Vondie Curtis-Hall directed story of Braxton’s life was the post-film special, Beyond the Headlines: Toni Braxton, which kept almost 3 million viewers glued to their television sets. The special featured a series of interviews with Braxton, her family, and a number of her musical collaborators over the years including Babyface, L.A. Reid, David Foster, and songwriter extraordinaire Diane Warren.
