Pictured: Badland Hunters, Griselda, and Masters Of The Universe
Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending January 28th, 2024. This week we’ll cover Badland Hunters, Masters of the Universe, Fool Me Once, Queer Eye, and Six Nations: Full Contact.
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 January 22nd, 2024 to January 28th, 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. Badland Hunters is doing great.
South Korean action film set in the future Badland Hunters had a great launch for its first weekend on the platform, with 14.3M CVEs.
That is the best launch for a Netflix film hailing from the Asia-Pacific zone, beating films such as Carter or Jung_E, and the 10th-best launch for any international Netflix film released on a Friday.
2. Griselda gets the job done.
Picture: Netflix
Griselda, the biggest new US Netflix series for January is now out, and its launch is the second-best launch for a Netflix limited series released on a Thursday, behind Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story with an excellent 20.6M CVEs over its first four days.
It might be a bit short to get into the all-time Top 10, but we will see how the series behaves in the next few weeks, especially considering how vacant the calendar is for new Netflix US series for February 2024.
3. Masters of the Universe: Revolution is no master of the viewership universe.
There’s no revolution ahead for Masters of the Universe: Revolution as the animated series launched with a very low 1.5M CVEs over its first four days, far behind other animated series based on IPs, such as Sonic Prime, Kung Fu Panda, or The Boss Baby.
To think that at one point, Netflix wanted to adapt this license into a movie with Noah Centineo is quite baffling, as none of the animated series based on it really broke through. Sometimes, all the numbers you need to know the viability of a project are there.
4. Fool Me Once is heading full steam towards the all-time Top 10.
There are only 2 million CVEs separating Fool Me Once from the all-time Top 10 for English series. As you’re reading this, it should already have them, as the British series keeps doing an extraordinary run on the service. After 28 full days, it reached 79.8M CVEs, the third best launch for a new English-speaking Netflix series in the books behind Wednesday and Dahmer, besting The Night Agent and Bridgerton.
How high can it go between now and its 91st day of release, the last day counted for the all-time Top 10? Well, based on comparisons, other series tend to multiply their 28-day number by between 1.2 and 1.5 after 91 days and for Fool Me Once, that would mean between 97M and 119M CVEs. Let’s be quite cautious and bet on 100M CVEs, which would make it the #6, between The Queen’s Gambit and The Night Agent. And let’s be clear about one thing: no one – absolutely no one – bet it would do such numbers.
5. Flops of the week.
Picture: Netflix
As Netflix signed with the WWE for an estimated 5b deal over the next ten years, Six Nations: Full Contact, another “sports-adjacent” documentary series, failed to make its mark on the Top 10 this week and was a no-show in the Top 10. It continues the long list of sports content not being able to enter the Top 10 after Break Point, Wrestlers (another WWE adjacent series – quick sidenote on WWE content: remember how Netflix released in 2020 a sitcom called The Big Show Show and quickly canceled it for lack of viewership? Well, this did not deter Netflix from investing in WWE content apparently) and so many more.
Queer Eye was also left out in the cold this week after the launch of its 8th season. It is a surefire hit when it comes to Emmy Awards, but it proves to be less and less of a hit with audiences. However, the fact that it lasted for eight years already is quite an achievement in itself in the world of Netflix.
6. Netflix Engagement Report Deep Dive: The 5 first Netflix Original films.
Last week, we learned that Scott Stuber, the head of Netflix Original Films, was out after seven years on the top job. This got me to take a look at the staying power of the first 5 Netflix Original films released (not under Scott Stuber, as they were all released between October 2015 and April 2016) in the Netflix Engagement Report.
Unsurprisingly, the most-watched film still after all these years is The Ridiculous 6 with Adam Sandler, still watched basically 33,000 times per day on average during the first six months of 2023.
It probably got help from the release of Murder Mystery 2 on the service during the period of time measured by the Engagement report.
Next on the list is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with 3.2M CVEs over the course of the first six months of 2023. Beasts of No Nation, the first major Netflix prestige film, is still doing good numbers, with 2.4M CVEs, on par with Pee-Wee’s Big Holidays.
Special Correspondents with Ricky Gervais and Eric Bana do not have the same draw as the previous ones, seven years after their release.
Now there’s something to be said about this first slate of Netflix Original films, and that’s how it was a blend of Adam Sandler comedies, sequels set in already existing licenses, prestige films, and remakes (Special Correspondents is a remake of a French film), some traits that are still part of the Netflix brand when it comes to films. Still, I feel like we now have a bit more variety in genres and topics, and that’s good to keep in mind.
That’s all for this week, feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below.