Pictured: The Diplomat, A Tourist’s Guide to Love, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always
Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending April 23rd, 2023. This week we’ll cover A Tourist’s Guide to Love, The Diplomat, Power Rangers, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody, Hunger, The Night Agent, The Marked Heart, Welcome to Eden, and Love is Blind. It’s safe to say it’s a bumper issue.
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 April 17th, 2023 to April 23rd, 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.
1. Hunger is a true hit for Netflix Asia.
Picture: Netflix
Do you know which Asian Netflix film became the most watched after 14 days?
No, it’s not an action film such as Carter or Kill Boksoon.
It’s also not a genre film such as Jung_E or Kingdom: Ashin of the North.
It’s a Thai drama set in the kitchen of a famous restaurant called Hunger, which we discussed last week. The film continued to perform really well in its third week and crossed the 30M CVE mark after 14 days, making it the most successful Asian Netflix film in our dataset. It currently sits at #9 in the all-time Top 10 for international films and is the only Asian film there.
Very (very) impressive.
Hunger CVE Netflix Viewership after 14 days compared with other Asian films.
2. A Tourist’s Guide to Love disappoints.
A film that is not impressive is the rom-com A Tourist’s Guide to Love which launches with 8.4M CVEs over its first weekend.
A very disappointing start for an American rom-com boasting the presence of Rachael Leigh Cook looking for love worldwide.
A Tourist’s Guide to Love vs other Netflix movie debuts
3. The Diplomat makes a lackluster debut.
Picture: Netflix
The major release last week was the American series The Diplomat starring Keri Russell, and its launch is quite average, with 8.6M CVEs after four days.
It’s considerably less than The Night Agent or even 1899 but it’s also better than Beef (which, by the way, had a tremendous hold for its third week).
The Diplomat first 4 days viewership CVE
So I’m not optimistic about a renewal, but it will also depend on its performance over the next few weeks.
4. The Night Agent ends its first 28 days.
One series that did not disappoint is The Night Agent, which ended its first 28 days with 6th place in the all-time Top 10 for English series.
It’s already a huge performance for this title but becomes even more impressive when we look at the best launch for new English series measured in CVEs.
The Night Agent 28 days CVE viewership
The Night Agent boasts the third-best launch for a new English series after 28 days behind Wednesday and Dahmer but just ahead of Bridgerton, The Watcher, and The Witcher.
The future is bright for agent Peter Sutherland.
5. Season 4 of Love is Blind improves upon season 3.
Weekly releases are a bit trickier to analyze than binge releases, so that’s why we did not mention season 4 of Love is Blind up until this week, as all episodes are finally released.
With those now in, we can compare its numbers to the previous seasons in our dataset.
Love is Blind S4 vs S4 vs S2 viewership
As we can see here, season 4 did a better run than season 3, but it did not do as well as season 2. The show ended with a bug after a technical glitch prevented Netflix from broadcasting live the reunion last week. It also came under fire for the treatment of candidates during the show’s taping.
Two major issues that might need to be addressed in season 5.
6. A tale of two series: the returns of The Marked Heart and Welcome to Eden
Picture: Netflix
I’m sure there must be a logical explanation as to why Netflix premiered the second seasons of two Hispanic shows two days apart in the same week, but I can’t help but feel there might have been an audience overlap between the two.
Anyway, the one that did good is The Marked Heart, with a launch for its season 2 exactly in line with the launch of its first season a year ago.
The Marked Heart S1 vs S2 Netflix CVE viewership
The Marked Heart is already renewed for a third season, as it should be based on these numbers.
The same can’t be said for Welcome to Eden which returned with 3.4M CVEs after three days, a 30% decline compared to the launch of season 1 a year ago.
Welcome to Eden S1 vs S2 CVE Viewership
The prospect of a third season is unclear after this launch but we’ll see how the series progress over the next weeks.
7. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always
It’s very hard to compare the performance of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always because it’s, on the one hand, a niche program but on the flip side can also appeal to a lot of people; not really a series but also not really a film with its 55 minutes runtime.
It launched with 7.1M CVEs, and since it was released on a Wednesday, apple-to-apple comparisons are hard to come by. Let’s say that it did a bit less than the launch of the family film Nightbooks.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Netflix Debut CVE Viewership
8. I Wanna Dance with Somebody is the latest Sony film to arrive on Netflix US
Picture: Sony Pictures
In the US, Netflix and Sony have a unique deal (for Netflix) that sends all new Sony films straight to Netflix after a certain period of time. So Sony films routinely manage to enter the Top 10 based only on their performance on Netflix US. The latest example of that is Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody, which was released on Netflix last Saturday and managed to score 2.8M CVEs in only two days in the US.
Now, we can actually compare that to other Sony films released under the same deal in the US, and something quite interesting appears.
I Wanna Dance with Somebody CVE Viewership
There seems to be a direct correlation between the performance at the US box office and their performance on Netflix with Bullet Train and Where the Crawdads Sing outperforming I Wanna Dance with Somebody and Devotion both in theaters and on streaming.
Now, it looks logical, but when we compare Nielsen streaming numbers in the US for other theatrical titles that are released in their first window on other streaming services, there’s no such direct correlation.
For instance, on HBO Max, The Menu ($38M at the US box office) did more EVCs over its first two weeks than Elvis ($151M at the US box office).
On Disney+, Encanto and Lightyear were the two theatrical films that had the more CVEs over their launch period on the service, both of which have been deemed as theatrical flops or underperforming. It’s too soon to conclude anything, but it’s interesting to notice (and keep analyzing)!
