Pictured: Last Call in Istanbul, Leo, and Squid Game: The Challenge – Cr. Netflix
Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for November 26th, 2023. This week, we’ll be talking about Squid Game: The Challenge, Leo, A Nearly Normal Family, Last Call for Istanbul, and old films and series.
Missed our top 10 report from last week? We covered Best Christmas Ever, The Crown, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, and Rustin.
The full top 10 list for the week of November 20th through November 26th can be found here.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from November 20th, 2023 to November 26th, 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. Squid Game: The Challenge is starting off strong.
Squid Game is back, but it’s not season 2 of the South Korean hit show.
It’s a reality TV competition launched right in time for Thanksgiving, making it a high priority for Netflix. And it paid off as the first batch of episodes of this weekly released show started with 20.1M CVEs, triple the launch of season 3 of Love is Blind, which used to be the best launch of a weekly released reality TV show released on a Wednesday.
2. Leo is another Adam Sandler success on Netflix.
Picture: Netflix
It’s been quite a lackluster year for Netflix animated films, on the numbers side anyway, with Nimona, The Magician’s Elephant or Monkey King having rather unimpressive viewership numbers, but that’s changing with Leo, voiced by Adam Sandler, which launched with 34.6M over Thanksgiving.
Comparisons are difficult since Netflix films are not usually released on Tuesdays, but Leo is charting similarly to The Sea Beast, one of Netflix’s biggest animated films. So that’s quite good!
3. Last Call for Istanbul is taking off.
Turkish Netflix films have a new king, and that’s Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ, whose rom-com Last Call for Istanbul did a grand launch with 10.7M CVEs over its first weekend, besting previous king Make Me Believe.
You might remember Tatlitug from the series Yakamoz-S245, a tie-in series to the Belgian series Into the Night. Maybe this success will prompt Netflix Turkey to greenlight another season of Yakamoz-S245, as the whole Into the Night universe is still ending on a cliffhanger.
4. A Nearly Normal Family continues the trend.
International limited series from Netflix have been on a roll this year with Dear Child, Muted to name a few. Still, we can also add now to the list the Swedish limited series A Nearly Normal Family which had a great launch with 6.4M CVEs over its first three days
That makes it the 4th best launch for a new international Netflix series released in 2023 after Muted, The Snow Girl, and Black Knight.
5. What is old is new again.
There’s a widespread misconception about Netflix, about how its movies and shows are buried deep in the catalog, nowhere to be found with no one to watch them after they’re released.
That’s one misconception that is tested this week as four Netflix Originals releases from 2019 to 2022 resurfaced in the weekly rankings.
Squid Game, Triple Frontier, The Christmas Chronicles, Falling for Christmas
The reasons are varied.
For Squid Game, it’s pretty evident that the release of the reality TV competition show would trigger a surge in the viewing of the actual series, which was released in 2021.
The Christmas Chronicles and Falling for Christmas resurgence can be attributed to… well, Christmas, but even so, Christmas Chronicles has been resurfacing periodically over the past two years around this time of year, making a bona fide seasonal hit for Netflix, and one that subscribers are returning to every year, much like Elf of Home Alone on other streaming services.
The last one is perhaps the most surprising, as the action movie Triple Frontier made it to the 6th place in the rankings last week, and that’s a lot harder to explain. You could attribute it to the recommendation algorithm that decided to push that specific title globally, making a 2019 release look fresh, new and exciting again as Netflix is reducing its output of new US films. That could be a sign of Netflix leaning on its immense catalog, or it could also be a sign that nothing is buried on Netflix. It’s just right below the surface, waiting.
That’s all for this week; feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below.
Netflix Synopsis: "Hundreds of cash-strapped players accept a strange invitation to compete in children's games. Inside, a tempting prize awaits -- with deadly high stakes."
