Picture: Best Christmas Ever, The Crown, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off
Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending November 19th, 2023. This week we’ll be covering Best. Christmas. Ever!, The Crown, Believer 2, the ongoing battle of Lupin vs Dear Child, Criminal Code, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, The Netflix Cup, and Rustin.
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, which has just been updated with even more data from the Nielsen top 10s.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from November 13th, 2023 to November 19th, 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. The Crown gets back on the throne.
Last week was the beginning of the end for The Crown as Netflix released the first four episodes of the final season. With 11.1M CVEs over its first four days, that’s a good launch on par with the launch of season 5 last year.
Now, there’s a caveat as since only four episodes were released, its CVE number is bound to be higher than a series of ten episodes like season 5 was. But nonetheless, it’s a good start.
2. Best. Christmas. Ever! did not do the Best. Launch. Ever.
The Holiday season is upon us already, and for Netflix, that means that comedies are around the corner.
Best. Christmas. Ever! is the first one this year, and with 16.3M CVEs over its first four days, it’s half of what Falling for Christmas with Lindsay Lohan achieved last year.
Overall, it feels low when your closest competitor on the graph is A California Christmas 2.
3. Believer 2 is not doing so good either.
It has been a really quiet week for international films, allowing the South Korean action film Believer 2 to ascend to first place in the international Top 10. But with only 5.6M CVEs, that’s a very low start for this kind of film.
That goes to show that not all #1 in the weekly Top 10 are created equal.
It is worth noting that most regions only quietly received the first Believer as a licensed title in recent weeks.
4. Lupin and Dear Child are racing towards the all-time Top 10
There’s a race in the all-time international TV Top 10 right now, and it’s pretty compelling!
In one corner, you have the German series Dear Child, and in the other, the third season of the French series Lupin which are fighting for the 10th place and if it looked like Lupin was too far behind to ever catch up on Dear Child, things have changed in the past couple of weeks, with Lupin closing in on Dear Child.
Will it be enough after their first 91 days? Only time will tell, but Dear Child is in its 11th week out of 13, while Lupin S3 is in its 8th week, so we will have to wait a bit to see who wins. The weekly comparison is quite striking as Dear Child bested Lupin during the first four weeks, but is now showing weaker legs than the French series. As I said, it’s compelling to see if that’s your kind of thing.
5. Criminal Code broke a record.
Brazilian series Criminal Code broke a record last week as it became the best launch for an international series released that’s been released on a Tuesday.
That performance makes it best the first season of The Tailor. It managed to reach all parts of the world, which is not something all Brazilian series manage to do so kudos!
6. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off crashes + The Netflix Cup and Rustin flop.
Picture: Netflix
Two big flops this week as the animated series Scott Pilgrim Takes Off did not take off in the Top 10 and was a no-show. That’s disappointing since it was heavily promoted and teased but also based on a seemingly popular franchise. Another flop is the first sport live event, The Netflix Cup that missed the Top 10 this week when only 1.9M CVEs were needed to break into. So, let’s just say that less than 0.5% of Netflix subscribers globally watched this live event. Sure, it was the first of its kind on the platform, but this feels very underwhelming. Perhaps the discoverability problems were the issue.
Finally, Academy Award hopeful Rustin with Colman Domingo did not manage to break into the global Top 10 for the week of its release, making it the first Netflix US film of the year to miss it. You’d have to go back to August 2022 and 13: The Musical to find another live-action Netflix US film not to appear in the weekly Top 10. Rough.
That’s all for this week; feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below.