Pictured: They Cloned Tyrone and Sweet Magnolias / Netflix
Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending July 23rd, 2023. This week, we’ll be looking at the week one performance of They Cloned Tyrone and Sweet Magnolias, plus taking a look at Netflix’s summer of documentaries and week 2 for The Lincoln Lawyer.
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. This week, we also saw Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story enter the all-time top 10 list.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from July 17th, 2023 to July 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. They Cloned Tyrone is not cloning the numbers of Netflix blockbusters.
Maybe releasing a film at the height of the Barbenheimer frenzy in theaters as a counterprogramming ploy was not such a good idea, and They Cloned Tyrone felt the burn this weekend as it launched with a lackluster 6.3M CVEs, the third worst opening for a Netflix US films released in 2023.
Its critical and audience ratings are quite decent, though (and we loved it at What’s on Netflix), so it might get some newfound wind in its sails in the coming weeks.
2. Netflix docs are not going strong this summer.
Last week, Netflix released The Deepest Breath, one of its prestige docs of the year and per the unwritten rule that says that “everything prestige is not doing bonkers numbers,” its launch was a bit underwhelming with only 4.6M CVEs, just a bit better than the launch of WHAM!, another summer doc from Netflix.
Every Monday throughout July, Netflix has been releasing a new doc from the Unknown collection, each centering on a different topic. The last one, Unknown: Cave of Bones did the best launch of the collection so far, beating lost pyramids and killer robots.
3. Sweet Magnolias is back for its third season.
The US series Sweet Magnolias about friendship and love is back and the launch of its third season is showing the usual decay rate between seasons that we’ve been accustomed to, from 5.1M CVEs in three days for season 2 to 4.6M CVEs in four days for season 3.
No growth in viewership here, and it’s a bit too early to presume if the series will be back (if it’s not already renewed, a Netflix trend of this particular year).
4. How concerned should we be about The Lincoln Lawyer? Quite concerned.
Three weeks in, how is the second season of The Lincoln Lawyer? Well, it’s hard to say since the series is being released in two batches, but thus far it doesn’t look good as first part is struggling with just 18M CVEs after its first 14 days.
As you can see on the graph, the series is swimming in quite reddish waters, synonymous with cancellation for other second seasons of various Netflix series like Raising Dion, Warrior Nun, Sex/Life and Fate: The Winx Saga, but let’s not forget that the second half of the season will be out soon and that it might change everything.
5. A quick look back on some films and series that are still going strong.
Last week, I forgot to take a look back on the first 28 days of Extraction 2, and it’s doing really well so far, to the tune of 114.7M CVEs after 28 days, the ninth-best launch for a Netflix film just behind… Extraction.
Extraction 2 should enter the all time Top 10 in the coming weeks. The new methodology used by Netflix for its all-time Top 10s enables us to see the long tail of performance of several titles over their first 13 weeks and two films are likely to get into the list. The first one is The Mother with Jennifer Lopez, released in May. In its 11th week, the film did 1.4M CVEs, quite an uptick from the week before, maybe because of the lack of new releases.
The other film still likely to enter the all-time Top 10 list is the French action film AKA, which added 0.7M CVEs during its thirteenth week, stable from the week before. There are only a few days left for it to add 0.4M CVEs and beat Blood Red Sky.
Weekly CVE hours added to AKA since launch
Netflix Synopsis: "Lifelong friends Maddie, Helen and Dana Sue lift each other up as they juggle relationships, family and careers in the small, Southern town of Serenity."
