Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending April 30th, 2023.
Every Tuesday, Netflix updates its top 10 stats page with 40 new hourly figures of the top movies and shows of the past seven days. If you want to browse the top 10 hourly data easily, visit our tool.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from April 24th, 2023 to April 30th, 2023, we’ll use “Complete Viewings Equivalent,” or CVE, expressed in millions. That means we divide the hours viewed announced by Netflix by the runtime of films or series. It allows for better comparisons between films and series, but it’s not an audience metric. It is the minimum number of viewings if they were all complete from the first second to the last of the film or season.
1. Murder Mystery 2 ends its first 28 days run on a high note.
Per my estimations, Murder Mystery 2 became the 12th Netflix film to pass the 100M CVE mark after 28 days with 102M CVEs, just shy of the 104.9M CVE of the first Murder Mystery during the same launch period.
That’s quite a remarkable hold for a sequel and another proof that Adam Sandler is a major draw on Netflix, with Hustle reaching 94.6M CVEs over its first 28 days back in 2022.
We’re hereby giving the Sandman a new nickname. Hence further, we’ll call him the “100M CVEs man”.
2. AKA punches hard right out of the gate.
Picture: Netflix
Another actor who is quietly beginning to become one of Netflix’s most prominent action stars is French actor Alban Lenoir who, after Lost Bullet and its sequel Lost Bullet 2, returned last week with yet another action film called AKA. It scored the best opening weekend for any French Netflix film, besting The Takedown, and the 5th best launch for any international film released on a Friday.
Thanks to its 2-hour runtime, it could enter the all-time Top 10 as soon as next week.
3. The Nurse breaks a record in its first week.
Another bright spot on the international TV side is the launch of the Danish limited series The Nurse. Being quite short, it did not break any record, hours viewed wise but when we use the CVE metric, it just did the best launch for any International series launched on a Thursday with 9M CVEs, besting “The empress”.
The Nurse breaking records for Netflix for CVE viewership for first four days.
Now, due to its short runtime, I expect it to drop quite quickly in the next two weeks, but that’s a solid launch.
4. Is Sweet Tooth succumbing to the 2-year hiatus curse ?
The “2-year hiatus” curse might claim a new victim this week as season 2 of Sweet Tooth launches with 7M CVEs over its first four days. That’s a bit better than the launch of season 2 of Shadow & Bone, but that’s not saying much.
Sweet Tooth vs. other season 2 premieres on Netflix – Green = Renewed, Yellow = Undecided futures, and Red = Canceled
Now there might be a bright spot here as season 3 is reportedly renewed regardless of how season 2 fares. Still, we will have to wait for any info about a renewal for a third season, same for Ginny & Georgia and Shadow & Bone.