‘Carry-On’ Is Now The Second Most Watched Movie Launch in Netflix History

Since its release in mid-December, Carry-On has dominated the charts and smashed into Netflix’s biggest movie launches of all time. Toward the end of its qualifying run, the movie has taken the second most-watched movie spot. 

The news comes as the movie comes to the end of its qualifying period and just a week after Netflix announced it was the number 1 movie for the second half of 2024 in its Engagement Report (impressive given it was a December release), picking up 275.50 million hours watched globally and 137.30 million views. 

Starring Taron Egerton, Jason Bateman, and Sofia Carson, the airport thriller saw a TSA agent have his life put in danger by a mysterious man who blackmails him into allowing a dangerous package onto a plane. 

T. J. Fixman, the film’s writer, celebrated the rise in the overall top 10 on social media overnight, saying, “With over 171,500,000 views, Carry On is now officially Netflix’s second biggest movie of all time. Thank you to everyone who watched and supported. This is wild! And congrats to Sofia Carson and the rest of the cast!”  Carson, who is about to appear in The Life List on Netflix, celebrated by saying, “Beyond. Wildest. Dreams.”

As a reminder, here’s the current list of the most-watched English movie debuts of all time:

1. Red Notice (230,900,000 views)
2. Carry-On (171,500,000 views)
3. Don’t Look Up (171,400,000 views)
4. The Adam Project (157,600,000 views)
5. Bird Box (157,400,000 views)
6. Leave the World Behind (143,400,000 views)
7. The Gray Man (139,300,000 views)
8. Damsel (138,000,000 views)
9. We Can Be Heroes (137,300,000 views)
10. The Mother (136,400,000 views)

Can Carry-On beat Red Notice? Nope.

Second place seems to be the limit, with just two more days to go before the 91 days used to assess the most popular movies of all time is up. Red Notice is still has over 32 million views more and it appears that’s simply out of reach with just a couple of days left to pick up views.

If we stack up those biggest movies of all time into a chart, you can see just how closely Carry-On tracked alongside Don’t Look Up throughout its initial run in the global top 10s. It also demonstrates that gap to Red Notice plus just how much of a juggernaut that movie was. 

What does this mean for the future of Carry-On? Back at the start of the year, director Jaume Collet-Serra told Variety they “don’t have any plans for a sequel,” but added, “if audiences wanted a sequel, families wanted a sequel and if we had an idea that would spark and live up to the original maybe we would do something. But right now, there are no plans.”

Are you glad Carry-On performed so well in the Netflix top 10s? Would you greenlight a sequel if you were in Netflix’s head of film role?