American Nightmare, The Kitchen, and The Bequeathed – Pictures: Netflix
Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending January 21st, 2024. This week, we’ve got the debuts of the new docu-series American Nightmare, the new British sci-fi movie The Kitchen, plus 60 Minutes and The Bequeathed. We’ll also have another deep dive into Netflix’s engagement report.
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 Top 10 search tool.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from January 15th, 2024 to January 21st, 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. American Nightmare has a dream launch.
It’s only the end of January, but three records have always been broken in 2024, one of which happened last week with the record launch of the docuseries American Nightmare. With 21.4M CVEs over its first five days, it easily beat Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal and became the new champion of that category.
True crime always delivers, and with the pedigree of who the documentary came from (the team behind The Tinder Swindler), its record-breaking debut probably shouldn’t come as a huge surprise.
2. The Kitchen makes a lackluster debut for Netflix UK
The Kitchen is a tough sell with its generic title, artwork, and setting in a not-too-distant London where the different classes of society clash.
The independent British feature film directorial debut from actor Daniel Kaluuya struggled with only 5.6M CVEs over its first week-end, one of the worst launch for a British film on Netflix. That’s despite good reviews from most critics.
3. 60 Minutes does a good launch.
One European film that was a bit easier to sell last week was the German action film 60 Minutes, which did a great launch of 10.6M CVEs over its first weekend.
That performance grants it the accolade of being the third-best launch for a Netflix German film, right behind titles such as Blood Red Sky and All Quiet on the Western Front, two titles that ended up in the all-time Top 10.
4. The Bequeathed Continues Recent Struggles for Netflix K-drama Content
South Korean limited series The Bequeathed launched quite poorly, with only 2.5M CVEs over its first three days, one of the lowest launches for a South Korean limited series on record.
Now, these series usually pop in their second week, but The Bequeathed is definitely no Squid Game, The Glory, or All of Us Are Dead.
5. Licensing strikes back on Netflix.
Over the past few months, legacy Hollywood studios have opened up the floodgates of licensing towards Netflix, something they shared a few years before was a mistake. But here we are again, and this week, a few titles popped in the Top 10 that sure were unconceivable just months ago.
Yellowstone S1 and S2 were respectively #4 and #9 on the English TV Top 10 following their release in some territories in Europe and South America. Over in the English films Top 10, Warner Bros Pictures The Legend of Tarzan, Focus Features’ Stillwater or STXFilms’ Queenpins (released in the US on Paramount+) managed to get a slot. Netflix is back to what it always was in the pre-2019 era when studios did not have grandiose dreams of streaming: a service with original films and films from basically every Hollywood studio.
6. Netflix Engagement Report Deep Dive: Duel of the acclaimed filmmakers
Back in January 2023, Netflix released two series from acclaimed filmmakers: Makanai: The House of Mako from Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-Eda and Copenhagen Cowboy from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn.
Neither series managed to get into a weekly Top 10s but thanks to the Netflix Engagement Report, we do have some numbers for their first six months on the platform, give or take.
It is a clear victory for Hirokazu Kore-Eda whose series managed to get 4.17M CVEs during the period covered by the Engagement Report (or 24 600 CVEs per day) whilst highly divisive Copenhagen Cowboy did only 1.54M CVEs during the same period, a mere 8,750 CVEs per day on average.
That’s all for this week, feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below.