The Sandman debuts on Netflix Top 10s – Picture: Warner Bros. Television / Netflix
Welcome to a new (and maybe recurring) feature where we run through the big stories from the weekly Netflix top 10 hourly data that drops every Tuesday. This week, we’ll be looking at the three big stories for the week ending August 7th.
Netflix updates its top 10 stats page weekly with 40 new hourly figures of the top movies and shows of the past 7 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 August 1st to 7th, we’ll use “Complete Viewings Equivalent” or CVE.
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 either.
1. Purple Hearts is huge.
After a great first week-end, Purple Hearts did a monster second week with 102 million hours viewed.
How huge is it? It’s the third best second week of any Netflix film released since July 2021, behind Red Notice and Don’t Look Up. It’s that big.
It’s so huge that Purple Hearts will possibly enter the all-time Top 10 for English films, bumping 6 Underground off the rankings.
A few reasons might explain why the movie has been such a success. Two of the biggest theories are around the fandom around Sofia Carson or Tiktok’s influence. We’ll see how long it will last.
2. The Gray Man is abnormally normal
Picture: Netflix
When it came out, the numbers for The Gray Man’s first week-end were quite unimpressive. Solid but unimpressive compared to the other blockbusters coming from Netflix, Red Notice, Don’t Look Up, and The Adam Project to name a few.
Since then, The Gray Man’s trajectory over its first three weeks has been “normal”. Normal in the sense of your run-of-the-mill-Netflix-film normal: a small bump in week 2, a steep decline in week 3.
Netflix blockbusters usually don’t do that (except for Don’t Look Up, but it got buzzy very quickly in the US). They come out with big numbers and then lose steam week after week. So far, The Gray Man has a better hold over its first three weeks than Red Notice and The Adam Project and it might continue that way.
There might be some explanation for this: the film has a slightly better average from people on IMDb, so word of mouth might be better. But it also makes you wonder if the marketing around the film was really worth it in the end for Netflix as it performs like your typical Netflix film without the huge numbers of your Netflix blockbuster. Anyway, the film is 6th in the all-time ranking and will likely end up 4th at the end of its first 28 days. Great, but is it enough?
3. The Sandman is pretty slow to emerge in the Top 10s after debut weekend.
The Sandman’s release succeeded in at least one respect: it united fans and critics alike and with an 8.0/10 average on IMDb on 32,000 ratings, making it one of the best-reviewed Netflix series of the year.
But how did it do during its opening weekend? It did… good. Not great or impressive, but just good.
The Sandman debut on Netflix Top 10s vs other shows
In fact, of all the new English series released on a Friday, it did the 4th best first week-end with 8.7 CVE.
That’s better than First Kill or The Lincoln Lawyer but a way behind Vikings: Valhalla and Man vs Bee.
Since it was heavily hyped and promoted and it’s based on a popular comic book, it could be viewed as a bit disappointing even if its universe is not exactly mainstream. Its second week will be all-important if a renewal decision is still to be made.
