Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending June 4th, 2023.
Every Tuesday, Netflix updates its top 10 stats page (recently moved within the Tudum site away from its own subdomain) 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.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from May 29th, 2023 to June 4th, 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.
Fake Profile beats a record this week
Colombian series Fake Profile made a record-breaking launch last week with 12.2M CVEs over its first five days.
It is now the best launch for any international series released on a Wednesday, besting the Polish series High Water. If there’s room for it creatively, it will most likely be renewed.
Manifest final season crashes and burns
Manifest returned last week for its last episodes ever (unless it gets the spin-off the creator wants), and the numbers are bad.
Since it’s a split release, Netflix aggregates the number of hours viewed of all episodes of season 4 last week, which means viewing for episodes of S4A released back in November and for the new episodes. That final season was a supersized one with 20 episodes and if we look at the numbers of hours viewed, the bad start of season 4B is quite visible.
Basically, the viewing hours last week of all 20 episodes of season 4 (including the 10 new ones) of Manifest only amounted to 70% of the hours viewed for the first 10 episodes of the season released back in November. That’s bad, but since the series is concluded, it bears absolutely no consequence for its future. However, following You, there may be something to be said about Netflix’s strategy of split releases and if they work as intended versus binge releases. The next series on the chopping block of the split release: The Witcher.
The Days makes a good start for a Japanese series.
There is some good and bad in The Days numbers for its debut. The good news is that it is the best launch for any Netflix Japanese series released on a Thursday, with 2.4M CVEs by far, the second being Sanctuary.
The bad is that it is still quite low in the grand scheme of Netflix’s ratings, and I’m pretty sure Netflix had high hopes this one would cross over Asia and onto the world stage since it deals with the Fukushima disaster and given HBO’s previous success covering a similar event in the hit limited series, Chernobyl.
Valeria holds it audience into season 3
Spanish series Valeria also came back for its final season and fans were there for it as it scored the same launch as season 2 last year. That’s not usually the case, so let’s call this a win.
Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story finishes its first 28-day run
Queen Charlotte ended its first 28-day run with approximately 69M CVEs making it the 8th-best launch for any new Netflix series in my dataset. Sure, it rides on the Bridgerton IP, but that is still quite an accomplishment and one of the highlights of Netflix’s year alongside The Night Agent.
A Beautiful Life and Rich in Love 2 have contrasting debuts
Last week, two international romance films were released by Netflix and had pretty contrasting launches. The first is the Danish romance musical film A Beautiful Life, which scored the 3rd best launch for a Netflix international film released on a Thursday with 10.2M CVEs.
On the other hand, the Brazilian sequel Rich in Love 2 did a pretty bad launch, especially since it’s a sequel with only 2.6M CVEs over its first week-end, making it the worst launch for any Netflix Latin American film released on a Friday. I guess there won’t be a Rich in Love 3 after that. Or maybe it’s already ordered, who knows ?
XO, Kitty is a surefire renewal
XO, Kitty passed the 14-day mark since its debut and things are looking good for the YA series as it crossed 32M CVEs over this period, the third-best launch for a new Netflix series this year. A renewal is assured, you can quote me on that.