Pictured: Mother’s Day, Blood & Gold and FUBAR – Netflix
Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending May 28th, 2023. Among the shows and movies we’ll cover for the past 7 days include FUBAR, Mother’s Day, Blood & Gold, Victim/Suspect, AKA, and Black Knight.
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 May 22nd, 2023 to May 28th, 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.
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FUBAR is not destroying the Top 10 this week.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was back last week with his first TV series, and its launch must be nowhere near what Netflix expected on the heels of the success of The Night Agent.
FUBAR launched with 12.5M CVEs over its first four days, a launch that puts it more in the Resident Evil zone rather than the The Night Agent zone, and that can’t be a good thing. It can still pick up next week, and it will need to if it wants to be renewed (if it’s not already renewed, as Netflix seems to have renewed many new US shows for second seasons preemptively lately).
FUBAR first four days viewership CVE for US series
Mother’s Day hits hard
Don’t confuse Mother’s Day with The Mother, but both films equally hit hard when they launched.
The Polish action film started with 15.5M CVEs over its first five days, making it the third-best launch for any international film launched on a Wednesday. Another Polish win for Netflix films.
Mother’s Day first 5 days vs other Netflix movies launched on a Wednesday
Blood & Gold makes an underwhelming debut.
One that I expected to open way bigger was the German over-the-top violent and gory action film Blood & Gold by the team behind the hit Blood Red Sky. But with only 8.3M CVEs over its first three days, that’s half of what Blood Red Sky did back in July 2021 over the same time period. Maybe they should have added vampires.
Blood & Gold first 3 days on Netflix vs other German films
Victim/Suspect has a quiet launch
As expected because it’s a prestige play from Netflix, the Sundance doc Victim/Suspect made a very quiet launch with only 4.2M CVEs, far behind all the other star-studded or true crime docs released on a Tuesday. But do not sleep on it as it is a powerful watch.
Victim/Suspect vs other Netflix Original documentaries in first 5 days
5. AKA finishes its first 28-day run.
French action film AKA ended its first 28-day run with 110.41M hours viewed, good enough for a third place in the all-time Top 10 for international films (and smack down in our prediction window from three weeks ago) behind Troll and Blood Red Sky. But when we look at the CVE Top 10, AKA is still 3rd but behind Troll and The Platform this time.
AKA vs all-time top 10 international movies
Black Knight is no Squid Game or All of us are Dead
South Korean series Black Knight is still in the charts after three weeks but as we compare the South Korean series 14 days after their debut, it becomes clearer that it will not be a Squid Game like success or even an All of us are Dead one.
South Korean series do not tend to be renewed traditionally as they are usually self-contained one-season runs. Still, with numbers like this, even if it were possible, I wouldn’t expect Netflix to grant a second-season order.
Black Knight vs other Netflix K-dramas