Pictures via Netflix
Every week, Netflix puts out the latest viewing figures for its top 40 performing movies and series (split into English and non-English languages). We then dig into the numbers in more depth with our weekly top 10 reports, with this report looking at the return of Hillbilly Elegy plus the debuts of Master of the House, Sweet Home season 3, Homicide, Simon Biles Rising, and Find Me Falling.
If you’re looking for some analysis of Cobra Kai’s numbers following the release of Season 6 Part 1, we’ve put that in a separate article that you can read here.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from July 15th, 2024 to July 21st, 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. Hillbilly Elegy is back in the Top 10.
The American Presidential Race had a very tangible impact on Netflix as Ron Howard’s film Hillbilly Elegy released in November 2020 (incidentally right during the last US Presidential election) came back into the Top 10.
The reason is quite simple, Hillbilly Elegy is an adaptation of an autobiographical memoir from J.D. Vance, who also happens to be the running mate of Donald Trump for the 2024 election.
Once a staunch Democrat, it is said that J.D. Vance turned Republican when the film was released and got panned by critics from the “coastal elites” he now despises. That’s quite the legacy for the movie that was watched the equivalent of 4.8M times last week (mainly in the US, the only country where it cracked the Top 10).
To put this number in context, Hillbilly Elegy was watched the equivalent of 4.5M times for the entirety of 2023. In other words, it was watched more last week than during the whole year of 2023.
2. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. is doing solid but not great numbers.
Had you asked me at the start of the year how Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F would do in the charts, I would have said, “One of the strongest contenders for the most-watched movie of 2024,” obviously.
But three weeks in, let’s say the film did the absolute minimum for a movie of that caliber, IP, and budget with 66.6M CVEs over its first 14 days.
That’s the same viewership as A Family Affair and Atlas, but very far from Lift, Damsel, or even Under Paris. I’m not so sure we will get a Beverly Hills Cop 5 with that kind of number.
3. LaLiga: All Access is a big big flop.
Netflix has been pushing for its sports-adjacent documentary series for several years now.
Docuseries LaLiga was probably a significant milestone on that agenda as it was supposed to be Drive to Survive but embedded in the most popular national league (Spanish Liga – Kasey might disagree and say that the Premier League is more popular but I stand by what I said) of the most popular sport globally (football or soccer if you’re from America).
The series was released last week, but there is nothing good to write home about. It did not manage to crack into the global Top 10, and it only managed to be fourth in the Spanish Top 10.
That’s a huge flop, even for sports docuseries, and it makes you wonder if Drive to Survive was just a flash in the pan, as Netflix has not replicated that template since.
4. Find Me Falling does the job.
The summer rom-com Find Me Falling with Harry Connick Jr. did not have much expectation to perform, but with 14.4M CVEs for its first weekend, it’s good enough for the 9th-best launch of the year for a film released on a Friday. The absence of new US films this week might help it secure a good second week.
5. Sweet Home stays the course for its final outing.
That’s not something we see every day.
The final season of South Korean series Sweet Home debuted with the essentially the same numbers as season 2 (released just six months ago), an excellent hold for a new season of a series
Now, we have seen times and times again the viewership of seasons dropping when the gap between two seasons was very long but here, we have an example of just the opposite, a strong hold between two seasons released just 6 months apart. Interesting, isn’t it?
6. Too Hot to Handle is way less hot than it used to be.
Reality TV show Too Hot to Handle was back for its sixth season last week (along with a third videogame based on it, making it the biggest transmedia IP Netflix got across TV and video), and from hot, the series is now just as lukewarm as season 6 launched with less viewership than the previous season.
The series might need a title change from now on. “Too Lukewarm to Care” is my preference.
7. Simone Biles rises, but not very high, while Los Angeles attracts fewer viewers than New York.
Two docuseries were released last Wednesday so let’s talk about them together. The first one was Simone Biles Rising, a new sports docuseries more focused on Simone Biles herself than the sport she practices and as you can see, that’s usually better if you want your sports docuseries to perform.
David Beckham, Connor McGregor, and Simone Biles had better numbers than Quarterback or Full Swing (two series that follow the Drive to Survive template), suggesting that personality is more important now for Netflix than the leagues themselves. We will have more insight into this when the series dedicated to Carlos Alcaraz is released next year, as we will see if it does better than Break Point (that’s an easy target).
The second new docuseries was the latest season of Homicide, in which each season deals with 5 cases in a different US city. The first season took place in New York, and season 2 is now about Los Angeles. Viewers (myself included) did not care as much for LA as for New York.
Now, something is interesting I tried to highlight here, and it is that docuseries about 1 case specifically do better than docuseries that tend to be compilations of different cases, not unlike sports docuseries about one athlete compared to docuseries about several athletes of a specific sport.
8. Master of the House is a surprise
Thai series Master of the House did a perfect launch for a new series from Asia as it started with 3.7M CVEs and was the third-best launch for a new Asian series released on a Thursday since June 2021.
It’s a notable step up from the previous Thai series holding the record, Thai Cave Rescue with 2.2M CVEs
That’s all for this week, feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below.
Netflix Synopsis: "An urgent phone call pulls a Yale Law student back to his Ohio hometown, where he reflects on three generations of family history and his own future."
