The Union and Matt Rife – Photo Credits: Netflix
It’s time for another look at the new Netflix top 10 figures that drop every Tuesday. This week is a slightly quieter report with titles covered, including Emily in Paris, The Union, American Murder: Laci Peterson, and the new stand-up special from Matt Rife.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from August 5th 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. Emily is back in Paris for the fourth time (and probably a fifth).
Season 4 of Emily in Paris was released last week, at least the first part. The series starring Lily Collins will be released in two batches, the next one being mid-September. The numbers for the first half of season 4 are in, and they are quite good. They are trending higher than the launches of seasons 2 and 3, with 19.9M CVEs over its first four days.
But it’s not that easy, as we have seen regarding split-releases. Per Netflix’s methodology, the views are counted by total hours viewed divided by the season’s runtime, and in the case of split releases, this runtime is half of a normal season. And in the streaming age, the most watched episodes in a season are usually the first ones, so it stands to reason that those “views” or CVEs for half-seasons are a bit inflated and cannot be compared apples-to-apples to numbers for complete seasons. That’s why it’s probable that the fourth season of Emily in Paris had fewer viewers than the previous seasons, but we will only be able to guess when the second part of the season is released.
Now, we can compare it more equally to other releases of the first part of seasons, and Emily in Paris really is part of Netflix’s royalty of series. It is the third launch of a split-released season on a Thursday, behind Bridgerton S3 and You S4.
These are strong numbers so far with decent hold from the previous seasons, all the indicators are positive for a swift renewal.
2. The Union is out with a blast.
Nothing screams more “Success on Netflix” than a buddy action comedy with a pair of recognizable actors, and The Union delivered very big numbers for its first three days, reaching 33.1M CVEs in that interval. This was the second-best launch for any Netflix film released on a Friday in 2024, just behind Damsel.
If we zoom out to all films released on a Friday since June 2021, that’s the 14th best launch with the same number of CVEs as Heart of Stone with Gal Gadot, which opened that precise week last summer. It’s also a bit under the launch of Me Time, another action comedy starring Mark Wahlberg and released in August 2022. That’s the Netflix definition of summer blockbuster season!
3. American Murder: Laci Peterson came from nowhere but the algorithm did what it does best.
True crime docuseries American Murder: Laci Peterson was released just a few days after it was announced (maybe because it wanted to steal the thunder of the upcoming release on Hulu of another docuseries based on that grueling case), but it found its audience all right as the docuseries netted 12.4M CVEs over its first 5 days, the third best launch for a docuseries released on a Wednesday in 2024.
4. Matt Rife is among Netflix’s most-watched stand-up comedians.
Love it or hate him, there’s a new player among the Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais of the Netflix stand-up world, and that’s Matt Rife, who managed with its latest special the second-best launch for any stand-up show released on a Tuesday since June of 2021, with 4.9M CVEs. That’s quite impressive, and we’ll definitely be seeing more of him in the future.
That’s all for this week. Please let us know what you think in the comments below.
