Pictured: The Abyss, Einstein and the Bomb, Players
It was an interesting week for the Netflix top 10s this week with some interesting stories to tell. This week, we’ll be covering the debut of Netflix’s big Valentine’s Day release: Players starring Gina Rodriguez and Tom Ellis, the new Einstein documentary – Einstein and the Bomb, as well as some international titles like The Abyss, House of Ninjas, and AlRawabi School for Girls.
A few changes in the all-time top 10 this week: Leave the World Behind has risen to be the fifth biggest movie ever. The hours on the Society of the Snow and Fool Me Once also rose but haven’t changed places.
You can find the full list of top 10s from Netflix on their Top 10 site.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from February 12th, 2024, to February 18th, 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. Love is Blind is finding love again.
Seasons of Love is Blind has had different release patterns and days of release over the years, so comparisons between all seasons will have to wait a bit. But for now, Season 6 is looking like it found a new lease on life after a disappointing season 5 in the charts. The numbers for the release of its first batch of episodes are good and quite on par with the launch of season 3.
We will have to wait some weeks for a definitive comparison with previous seasons, but it looks good for this one.
2. Players is a bit late in the game.
Cr. K.C. Bailey/Netflix ©2023.
Let’s put it bluntly: I think Netflix made a mistake by releasing Players onto Netflix on Valentine’s Day.
The new romantic comedy starring Gina Rodriguez did not have time to climb in the charts before Valentine’s Day, and when that day is done, there’s no love anymore for rom-coms for most people. Last year, Your Place or Mine was released on February 10th, in the period leading up to Valentine’s Day. A release date like this one probably would have been better for Players as it struggles with only 16.3 M CVEs over its first five days, far behind Look Both Ways or even The Kissing Booth 3, which retrospectively was a beast of a success.
3. Einstein is still da bomb.
The hype for Oppenheimer is still lingering in the air as the Netflix documentary Einstein and the Bomb roared to 8.5M CVEs over its first three days, the second-best launch for a Netflix documentary released on a Friday.
4. The Abyss is not really deep.
I had The Abyss as a potential international hit, but its launch is quite disappointing, with only 6.9M CVEs after its first three days, an average launch for a Netflix Nordic film.
5. House of Ninjas is surging from Japan.
Something very interesting has happened for the new Netflix Japanese series over the past two years. Look at the graph showing the very good launch of House of Ninjas with 4.2M CVEs after four days.
The interesting thing is that if you go from the bottom series to the top two ones, you have the Netflix Japanese line-up of new series basically in chronological order, meaning that each new Netflix Japanese series since First Love did a better launch than the previous one, the only exception being Yu Yu Hakusho beating House of Ninjas. The land of the rising sun, indeed.
6. Taylor Tomlinson is not quite having it all
The new stand-up comedy show from Taylor Tomlinson is another example of a trend in that the most famous names of comics for broad audiences do not do the best numbers, except for Dave Chappelle. I’d rank Taylor Tomlinson as a comic that managed to cross over to a broad audience recognition, but that did not help her latest comedy show reach new heights as it launched with only 2.3M CVEs over its first six days, just between Amy Schumer and Pete Davidson, two other stand up comedians I would say crossed over.
7. Two returning international series: Good Morning, Veronica and AlRawabi School for Girls.
Two international series returned last week and managed to get into the Top 10. The first one is the Brazilian series Good Morning, Veronica, whose latest season is also its last, and fans were present as it did better than the launch of Season 2.
Two and a half years after the release of its first season, the Jordan series AlRawabi School for Girls did not have much luck, but the decay rate between the launch of seasons 1 and 2 is not that big.
8. Netflix Engagement Report Deep Dive: Netflix Films Released in February 2018.
In February 2018, the studios were all gearing up to enter the Streaming Wars, a move that would prove nearly fatal for all of them, but Netflix did something that it has not replicated since. During the 2018 Super Bowl, a trailer for The Cloverfield Paradox was broadcast.
The film was hotly anticipated and was supposed to be released in theaters by Paramount, but during the game, we got a trailer, and it said simply at the end, “Available on Netflix at the end of the game.” That was an innovative way to release a film, using streaming strength and marketing at the biggest time of the year on American TV to shadowdrop an anticipated film. Sure, you know the rest of the story: the film was panned by critics and people alike (I quite enjoyed it when I watched it for the first time last year), and it is now the butt of a joke. Netflix had countless occasions to do the same thing during TUDUM or Geeked Week, but never did it again. The only area where it does it is in video games, with the shadow drop of Rainbow Six: SMOL just yesterday, for instance. Some people might also say that every Netflix release is a shadow drop as they release them without any marketing, but let’s not go there.
February 2018 also saw the release of two US romantic films, the first one being When We First Met with Adam Devine and Alexandra Daddario and the second one being the drama Irreplaceable You with Gug MBatha-Raw and Michiel Huisman. Finally, the last US film being released that month was one to file under “Netflix gives a boatload of money to an acclaimed director to make a passion project film that turns out to be underwhelming at best,” a category that became pretty busy over the years. It was a sci-fi film, Mute, by Duncan Jones.
Five years after their releases, which one of those four films was still watched the most between January and June 2023? Let’s take a look.
Two films emerged here: When We First Met and The Cloverfield Paradox, with the equivalent of 16,500 complete viewings per day over the first six months of 2023.
That’s all for this week; let us know what you think in the comments below.
