Pictures: Netflix
It’s time for another rundown of the big stories from the weekly Netflix top 10 numbers that provide us the viewing hours and views for the top 40 titles on Netflix globally broken down into movies and series further split by English and non-English.
This week, we’ll look at the rather disappointing final return of The Umbrella Academy and the latest season of Gabby’s Dollhouse.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from August 5th, 2024 to August 11th, 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. The Umbrella Academy probably should not have come back for a final season.
The fourth and final season of The Umbrella Academy was released last week, and it’s hard to find people who liked it. Even our own superfan Jacob called it a “rushed and sad end to a great series.” Fans did not really answer the call, as the fourth season launched with only 8.4M CVEs over its first four days, far from the 15.3M CVEs achieved by Season 3 in its first five days.
There’s an argument to be made that the viewership of the first days of a new season for a returning series is as much an indictment of the quality of said season as of the previous season as the decline in viewership can also be attributable to the decline of viewership during the run of the past season. Anyway, it’s still a lackluster end for what was once one of the flagship series of the Netflix fleet. This is very apparent when we compare its launch to other launches of the fourth season of Netflix shows.
2. Under Paris is still racing its own marathon against Troll
The Paris Olympics may be over, but the race for the gold medal in the International Films category is still raging nine weeks after the release of Under Paris.
The film is now assured to rank at least second in the all-time chart when its first 91 days have elapsed, as it was only 0.1M CVEs behind Society of the Snow as of Sunday.
The race for gold might be trickier, though. Under Paris is now on track to finish around the 101-102M CVEs after 91 days, just a short way away from the 103M of Troll. It’s been steadily reclaiming some ground over the past few weeks, but that should prove to be insufficient in the end.
3. Gabby’s Dollhouse? Try Gabby’s a Powerhouse.
The Netflix animated series Gabby’s Dollhouse has been around for a long time. The tenth season was released last week, but it shows no signs of slowing down. The launch of season 10 did better than the launch of the previous season (3M CVEs versus 2.3M).
According to the Engagement Reports, Gabby’s Dollhouse was the most-watched Netflix animated series on the service in 2023, and that might continue for a few more seasons.
4. Mission: Cross did fine.
For a Netflix South Korean to succeed globally, it must have a hook.
Usually, it’s sci-fi with titles such as Jung_E, Badland Hunters, and Space Sweepers, or it could also be visually interesting, like Carter.
Mission: Cross has none of those hooks, and so its launch is quite unremarkable as it totaled 4.5M CVEs for its first 3 days, good enough for the second-best launch of the year for a South Korean film but nowhere near the levels of past successes from this country.
5. Love is Blind: UK is not finding suitable lovers.
One of the major themes of 2024 so far has been how consistently series from the UK have upstaged US series in either or both the viewership or the critical acclaim. Think Fool Me Once or The Gentlemen, One Day, Supacell (which got renewed yesterday), and the list goes on.
Well, Love is Blind: UK is not following the steps of its American counterpart as the first episodes of the first season of the new international variation of the hit dating show from Netflix did not really register with the audiences, scoring only 3.6M CVEs over its first 5 days, basically half of what the last season of Love is blind did.
This may also be a result of some strange programming on Netflix’s part, which decided to release two variations of Love is Blind concurrently, one from the UK and one from Mexico, when those two could have been released back to back.
6. The Influencer might need influencers to pump its viewership up.
Another weekly show from South Korea started last week, and it did not start with a bang. The Influencer only netted 1.3M CVEs for the first week of its first batch of episodes, which is on the very low end of weekly South Korean shows released on Netflix.
7. Shahmaran got lost in the woods.
Turkish series Shahmaran did a good run in its freshman season but season 2 is so far a disappointment with a dismal decay rate and only 1.2M CVEs after 4 days.
This spells trouble for the series that might not live long enough to have a third season.
8. “Hasseen Dillruba 2” is quite a success.
Usually, sequels tend to launch with less than the original film but that’s not the case with Indian film “Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba“, sequel of “Hasseen Dillruba“. It launched with 3.7M CVEs over its first 3 days, the 4th best launch for any Netflix Indian original films released on a Friday since June 2021 and a notch above the original film. Is it good enough for a third film? We’ll see.
That’s all for this week – let us know what you think in the comments.
