Picture: The Recruit, Sonic Prime and BARDO
Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending December 18th, 2022.
Netflix updates its top 10 stats page weekly 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 December 12th to December 18th, 2022, 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. The Recruit makes a strong start on its its first opening weekend
Cr. Philippe Bossé/Netflix © 2022
It has been quite an atrocious year for new US Netflix Original series (except for Wednesday and some limited series) given the number of cancellations. The Recruit starring Noah Centineo is the last one of 2022, and it landed on the “good side” of the chart with the likes of Vikings: Valhalla, The Sandman, and The Lincoln Lawyer, series that were renewed.
The Recruit debut vs other Netflix shows in 2022
Its second and third weeks will be key for any decision on its renewal, but it’s off to a good start.
2. Sonic Prime rushes past competition
An animated series based on a prestigious IP is usually a prerequisite for success on Netflix, and Sonic Prime is doing just that with 7.8M CVEs over its first four days.
That’s the best launch for any animated series released on a Thursday.
Sonic Prime opening weekend vs other Netflix animation launches
3. Wednesday nears the end of its launch period
Picture: Netflix
After 26 days on Netflix, Wednesday is still a powerhouse at Netflix, adding another 26M CVEs in its fourth week, 177M total.
The series is nearing the end of its 28-day launch period, and as I predicted two weeks ago, it will land around the 185M CVEs mark, making it the second most watched series in Netflix’s history, far above Dahmer and Stranger Things 4 but quite a ways from Squid Game.
Still, it’s one of the most telling examples that the bar Squid Game set can be reached, and we’ll see if 2023 provides other examples of that.
Wednesday viewership vs Squid Game, Stranger Things and Dahmer
4. BARDO is the last casualty of Netflix’s prestige movie slate of 2022.
A prestigious director (Alejandro G. Inarritu), a 160 minute-runtime, a pretty empty slate on the film side last week, all was done to give BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, quite a runway to appear in the international Top 10.
Despite all of this, the movie fell short of the rankings this week. Sure the film received very mixed reviews when it hit festivals in the fall. Still, it’s one of the main misfires of the “prestige slate” of 2022 that failed to connect with audiences, alongside Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Odyssey by Richard Linklater and Wendell & Wild by Henry Sellick.
Per Flixpatrol, it only managed to appear in Mexico’s daily Top 10.
5. Blockbuster is canceled after only one season
Picture: Netflix
Usually, when cancellations are announced, we can dive deep into the numbers to explain why that decision happens. Regarding Blockbuster, there are no numbers to dive deep into apart from a few daily top 10s and external data.
The series never managed to reach a weekly Top 10 so we don’t have any numbers from Netflix. And we don’t have any numbers for Nielsen in the US either. Another example of how external marketing will only get you so far on Netflix.
