Billy Bob Thornton & Leonardo DiCaprio's 10-Part Drama Series Still Hasn't Been Topped

Published Oct 8, 2026, 3:30 PM EDT Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock. If you asked me to guess what the biggest drama series premiere in Fox’s history was, I would’ve said 24 or House or The X-Files or some other smash hit, not a one-season wonder no one’s ever heard of. But that’s what holds the record: the 1990 TV sequel to The Outsiders. It was comedies like The Simpsons and Married... with Children that initially put the Fox network on the map, but it quickly moved into the drama space, and The Outsiders was one of its first real attempts at an original drama series. Executive-produced by Francis Ford Coppola, The Outsiders acted as a follow-up to his 1983 film of the same name. The 90-minute pilot episode essentially acted as a feature-length sequel to Coppola’s movie, and even began with a short sequence from the film in which Matt Dillon’s Dallas Winston is fleeing from police and being shot at. The series premiere of The Outsiders premiered on Fox as a special preview, and pulled in 14.1 million viewers (via Nielsen). This made it the biggest drama debut in Fox’s history — a record that it still holds to this day — but it didn’t maintain that success in the following weeks when it switched to a regular timeslot. The Outsiders’ premiere viewership was helped a lot by its Married... with Children lead-in. That was one of the most popular sitcoms on the air at the time, and half of Married... with Children’s viewers tuned out when the pilot episode of The Outsiders began. The series was ultimately cancelled after one season, but it still holds that viewership record. The Outsiders Pulled In Fox's Biggest Audience For A Series Premiere In 1990 Via MovieStillsDB When it premiered in 1990, The Outsiders marked the all-time biggest debut for a Fox show. At the time, the network was still in its infancy, being held up by Tracey Ullman and Bart Simpson, but the show still holds that record to this day. Jay R. Ferguson starred as Ponyboy Curtis, the main protagonist from the novel, but the supporting cast was rounded out by some soon-to-be famous faces. An early-career Billy Bob Thornton played Buck Merrill and an even earlier-career Leonardo DiCaprio played the unnamed boy fighting Scout. If Fox knew the caliber of would-be star they had in their supporting cast, maybe they wouldn’t have canned The Outsiders so soon. But they didn’t know they had Leo and Billy Bob, so they did cancel the show. More than three decades after the failure of the TV adaptation, in 2023, a stage musical adaptation called The Outsiders: A New Musical hit the boards. The show was a smashing success, just like the TV show, but unlike the TV show, it was actually able to sustain that success. The show went on to win the Tony Award for Best Musical. Fox Will Likely Never Top 14 Million Viewers For A Series Debut Again It’s unlikely that The Outsiders’ viewership record will ever be broken by another drama debut on Fox. Thanks to drastic changes in viewing habits, driven by technology and the digital world, people just aren’t tuning in to see regularly scheduled TV programming like they used to. These days, when a show is a big hit, most of its viewers will catch up on a streaming service, or at least save it for later. It’s extremely rare that audiences in 2026 will make an appointment to sit down in front of the television set at a specific time and watch a TV show when it’s on. Audiences did that in 1990, when The Outsiders premiered, because there was no other option. But we have streaming and YouTube and TikTok now, so tuning in to watch must-see TV on Fox is simply a thing of the past. Source: Nielsen The Outsiders Release Date 1990 - 1990-00-00 Network FOX Directors Bill Duke, Janet Greek, Gwen Arner, Jan Eliasberg, Lee H. Katzin, Michael Toshiyuki Uno, Sharron Miller Writers Alan Shapiro, Bruce Kirschbaum, David Abramowitz, Ira Steven Behr, James Kearns, Jeb Rosebrook, Joe Byrne, Robert Harders, Todd Robinson, Tammy Adler Cast Billy Bob Thornton Buck Merrill Christian Frizzell Soc #1