Pictured: Eric, Geek Girl and Damsel / Netflix
Welcome to your slightly belated weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending June 2nd, 2024. There is much to cover this week, including Damsel entering the all-time top 10, Bridgerton entering the elite tier of Netflix Originals, and covering debuts of Eric, Geek Girl, and Raising Voices.
In case you missed it, we published an expanded look for the Netflix Engagement Reports earlier this week, covering all the movies pre-2022 and their performance throughout 2023, looking into what genres work and which don’t.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from May 27th, 2024, to June 2nd, 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. Damsel still slays and enters the all-time Top 10.
Just a few days before the cutout date of its first 91 days of release, Damsel, starring Millie Bobby Brown, finally managed to get into the all-time Top 10, beating The Mother and soon We Can Be Heroes to presumably land at number 7, behind The Gray Man.
As this chart shows, The Mother, The Gray Man, and Damsel all had very similar trajectories in viewership on the service.
2. Colors of Evil: Red is a surprise success from Poland.
Polish thriller Colors of Evil: Red had a fantastic first five days with 19.9M CVEs and one of the best launches for an international film released on a Wednesday.
Now, this success is understandable considering how big Netflix’s global marketing push for the film was. No? Exactly. Without any type of marketing whatsoever, this film managed to be a breakout success right out of the gate, highlighting one of our long-standing mantras: People will watch what they want to watch on Netflix, and marketing is just a very tiny part of discoverability on the service. So stop blaming the lack of advertising for any flop. People will watch what they want to watch.
3. Bionic is in need of an augmentation
The Brazilian science-fiction film Bionic had a very average launch, with just 7M CVEs over its first five days. That’s average, even for Brazilian films.
4. Season 3A of Bridgerton is now part of Netflix royalty.
Before the release of season 3, I considered Bridgerton a solid A-tier Netflix show in terms of successes, with very good numbers but nothing Earth-shattering. Now, I might reconsider that as the launch of Season 3A now stands firmly beside elite-tier shows, such as Money Heist and Stranger Things, with 76.1M CVEs after its first 14 days.
It will enter the all-time Top 10 next week before presumably falling off of it the week after when the second part of the season is released. After that, how high it will go remains to be seen.
5. This TikTok cult needs more followers
The new true crime docuseries Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult launched very averagely last week, with only 8.8M CVEs during its first five opening days.
If TikTok has been proven to have helped some Netflix content, actually releasing programs about TikTok is not the draw Netflix might have envisioned it.
6. Eric and Geek Girl Debuts
British series have taken the lead this year in Netflix programming as they were not impacted by the strikes from last year. Two were released last week, the first one being Eric with Benedict Cumberbatch. Set in 1980s Netflix, Cumberbatch plays a father looking for his missing son, and its launch is quite good, all things considered.
It had 6.8M CVEs over its first four days, a solid opening albeit on the low side of that category.
The other series presumably did not have the same budget, as it did not boast a huge cast. Set in an English secondary school, Geek Girl is a young adult/teen series with 3.4M CVEs over its first four days, it did in the same vicinity as some of the latest English-speaking Netflix series such as Bodkin, Dead Boy Detectives or Tires.
It might get renewed because of its limited budget and “success” relative to it, so stay tuned.
7. Raising Voices is another success hailing from Spain
Another series set in a high school, the Spanish series Raising Voices, did a great launch for a Spanish series, the third best, in fact, only behind Berlin and The Snow Girl with 4.8M CVEs in its first three days.
That could also spell a swift renewal for the series.
That’s all for this week. Please let us know what you think in the comments below.