Pictures: Netflix
Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for July 7th, 2024. We’ll be diving into the latest batch of new figures for the most watched movies and TV shows separated by English language and non-English language.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from July 1st, 2024, to July 7th, 2024, 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. Axel Foley does the job, but is that enough?
The fourth installment in the Beverly Hills Cop series was released last week, just in time for the 4th of July in the US, hoping that this release date and the nostalgia around the first films would boost its viewing figures, and it probably did. With 41M CVEs over its first five days, it’s good enough to be the 4th best launch for any Netflix film released on a Wednesday since June 2021.
But it also must be quite disappointing for Netflix that the film did not best The Kissing Booth 3 or the Polish hanky-panky film 365 Days 2 and barely did better than Under Paris when those three films had a cumulated budget of maybe a fifth of the budget of Axel F.
Return on investment is hard to figure out for Netflix films as a lot of metrics are to be considered, but if we just apply a basic ratio between budget and viewing figures, the $150M price tag for Axel F. does not have the same ROI as the $15M for Under Paris.
2. Under Paris is still swimming fast.
Since I’m writing about Under Paris, let’s check up on it as it came back on top of the international film Top 10 this week, for its fifth week, which is quite impressive even if the global Top 10 has been in the pits for a few weeks.
Now, after five weeks, Under Paris is currently number 3 in the all-time international Top 10 behind Troll and Society of the Snow. Still, the actual race starts now as it will try to counter the extraordinary run that Society of the Snow had after its first few days.
Number 2 or number 3 ? Place your bets now. Some things to remember: Society of the Snow’s second half of run was buoyed by the Awards season when it did great, but Under Paris might get a boost from the Olympic Games that start in a few days.
3. The Man with 1000 Kids also has plenty of viewers.
As far as docuseries go, The Man with 1000 Kids did a good launch, scoring 6.6M CVEs over its first five days, good enough to be the sixth-best start of the year. Nothing groundbreaking, but just a solid start.
4. SPRINT is a bit slow at launch.
“Sports-adjacent content” has been all the rage lately at Netflix, but with no hit to speak of so far, and that’s not docuseries SPRINT that will change that as it launches with just 2.4M CVEs over its first six days (a notch above NASCAR: Full Speed and Tour de France: Unchained season 2).
The only “sports-adjacent content” audiences seem to like on Netflix based on our numbers are either true crime or focused on one individual only (think Beckham or Neymar).
5. An update on the second seasons of That ’90s show and The Mole
They both missed last week’s charts but they were here this week.
Let’s start with the second season of the weekly released game show, The Mole. Its second batch of épisodes improved on the first Season’s second batch of épisodes with 4.8M CVEs, which is good. That is what you want to see.
Now, the story is a bit different for the second season of That 90s Show, which barely made it into the Top 10 this week with 1.8M CVEs (the highest it will ever get, presumably) between its 5th and 11th day of release.
Last year, season 1 clocked in 6.7M during the same period.
I will go on a limb here and predict that season 2 of That ’90s Show will do less over its first six months than season 1 did over its first four days (10.4M CVEs). The best part is that we will get the numbers in the next “What We Watched” reports released by Netflix every six months, so I’ll be able to check if I was right.
That’s all for this week. Let us know what you think in the comments below.