Pictured: The Octopus Murders, Spaceman, Code 8: Part 2
Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending March 3rd, 2024. A lot is covered this week, including the double sci-fi movie Whammy with both Spaceman and Code 8 Part 2 released last week. We’ll also look into the debuts of The Octopus Murders, the new French series Furies and see if The Netflix Slam managed to chart (it didn’t). Finally, you’re probably anxious for a check-in with Avatar: The Last Airbender, so here’s all that and more!
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 February 26th, 2024 to March 3rd, 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. Avatar: The Last Airbender is losing a bit of altitude but will probably stick the landing…
For its second week, Avatar: The Last Airbender lost a bit of altitude, -6% to be exact, as it reached 41M CVEs after 11 days. That’s one of the dangers of having a title based on such a known IP, as people familiar with it will flock to it during the first days before maybe disengaging with it if it’s not what they want. The reception for Avatar has been lukewarm and that’s probably why it saw a decrease in viewership for its second week. But that’s not a vast decrease either.
The natural series to compare it to is One Piece, and the two series have quite a similar trajectory over their first 11 days. One Piece gained viewership in its second week (+4%), but as of now, Avatar is still trending higher.
I also added The Sandman to this chart as it is also an adaptation of a comic that seems entirely in the same wheelhouse as the others. Some (Hollywood trades that should know better) have written that the decrease in viewership for Avatar could spell trouble for the series as it was at risk of cancellation. Now, there are other factors than the audience to consider, but based on the viewership alone, if Avatar were to be canceled with those numbers, that would be a huge shock as no series that ever crossed 40M CVEs after Netflix ever canceled 11 days. So our prediction still stands: Avatar will get renewed for a season 2 at the very least.
Now, do you want to see something fun? Avatar: The Last Airbender has so far the same trajectory (minus a few thousand CVEs) than limited series Griselda.
It happens some time that two completely different programs have the same trajectory and maybe we’ll do an article about it sometimes.
2. Spaceman is alone, drifting in space.
Speaking of the Sandman, let’s talk about Adam Sandler, who suffered its first bona fide Netflix flop this week as Spaceman got lost in space, far from the usual universe of successes Sandler got on Netflix. With only 8.8M CVEs, Spaceman is the worst Sandler launch in the books, even lower than You are so not invited to my Bat-Mitzvah. It’s also the 61st launch of a US film released on a Friday out of 74 in my dataset.
Now, the film is arguably a tough sell for audiences, and its slow pacing and out-of-the-way elements probably threw off some people.
3. Code 8: Part II is doing ok-ish.
Number one in the Top 10 English films this week is Code 8: Part II, a sequel to, you guessed it, Code 8, which was not a Netflix Original film but was released worldwide on the service. Due to its good numbers, Netflix bought the sequel, and here we are, with 20M CVEs over its first five days and the 9th best launch for a US film released on a Wednesday.
Now, is it a good launch? Well, on paper, yes, but if you look at the other films which started with 20M or so CVEs over their first five days, like Mr Harrigan’s Phone or Intrusion, it’s not what you would call top of the line Netflix films.
4. Furies is not doing a furious launch.
French action series Furies was #2 on the International TV chart, and with 2.7M CVEs over its first three days, it’s quite a subdued launch, the 6th best out of Europe since June 2021 (excluding limited series).
It should be renewed even though the graph suggests that it could go either way. The series has been progressing well worldwide since Sunday, so it might gain some steam in next week’s charts.
5. The Netflix Slam is not a slamming success.
Picture: Netflix
The tennis exhibition match between Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz was not in this week’s charts. Still, the fact that it was broadcast on a Sunday evening in Europe (meaning Monday morning in Asia) probably did not do it any favor in a Netflix Top 10 that studies watch time between Monday and Sunday. However, it did manage to break into the weekly Top 10 in Spain, which is quite good. The overall audience for the match was well under 1.7M CVEs, the lowest number to get into the Top TV.
6. Not a lot of people cared about Loh-Kiwan.
South Korean Netflix films are usually hits on the service, but only if they are action or science-fiction films. The other ones, the dramas and the romance films, are not, and My Name is Loh Kiwan is another example of that as it launched with a very low 3.1M CVEs over its first weekend.
7. Some news from India.
Two Indian programs were in the charts this week. The first one is the documentary series The Indrani Mukerjea Story: Buried Truth, which did the lowest opening for an international documentary series in my dataset with 2.3M CVEs.
The other one is series Maamla Legal Hai which launched with an average 1.1M CVEs, higher than Rana Naidu which got renewed but lower than Aranyak and Guns & Gulaabs.
8. The Octopus Murders is a rare documentary misfire.
Netflix has been churning out true crime documentaries like clockwork and most do decent numbers. That’s not the case for American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders, which had everything in its title to be hit, to be fair. But with only 3.9M CVEs over its first five days, that’s one of the lowest openings for a US documentary series released on a Wednesday.
9. Netflix Engagement Report: Netflix US series ended after three seasons before 2022.
This is a super specific query to look for in the Netflix Engagement Report, but I wanted to look at how the viewership evolves season after season for a series that ended two years ago. I decided to focus on 5 of those series, and here are the results :
The two most-watched series in this analysis are family series, with Lost in Space being the only one where the viewership for season 3 is higher than for season 2. It could be because the “natural” viewership from season 3 (released at the end of 2021, so the latest of the five series) seeped into the beginning of 2023. The decay rate between seasons 1 and 3 ranges from -26% to -50%, with Apatow-produced Love managing the feast of being the lowest-watched of the lot and the series with the highest decay rate between seasons 1 and 3.
Santa Clarita Diet is an interesting case here as it is the only series of the lot to have been canceled after its third season, with all the other ones having a third and final season. The numbers for it are average, both in viewership and decay rate, so if there’s an explanation for its cancelation, we will not find it in the Engagement Report.
That’s all for this week, feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below.