Uncharted – Picture: Sony Pictures
Since 2022, Netflix and Sony have had a Pay-1 output deal, meaning that all Sony theatrical films have been arriving first on streaming on Netflix several weeks/months after their release in theaters. With dozens having now been released (with plenty more on the way), which ones have been the top performers and disappointments? The answers may surprise you!
For this analysis, we used our Complete Viewing Equivalent metric over the first 14 days of release in the US, thanks to Nielsen data, specifically the top 10 releases that occur every week. The CVE metric is obtained by dividing the number of minutes viewed by Nielsen every week by the runtime of the films. That’s what Netflix now calls “Views”. We A couple of extra footnotes: Sony films are only available on the ad-free tiers in the US. Nielsen data only covers the US, so this viewing doesn’t include any other regions that receive Sony movies on a first window basis, such as India. Plus, we only looked at Sony films that made it into the Nielsen Top 10, so some titles may have been missed, such as some of the smaller Sony Pictures Classics titles.
Most Watched Sony Pictures Movies on Netflix
Let’s start with the raw viewing numbers, straight from Nielsen, based on Sony Pictures’ main 35 theatrical releases:
- Uncharted – 21.5M views
- A Man Called Otto – 20.5M
- Bullet Train – 19.6M
- Where The Crawdads Sing – 18M
- No Hard Feelings – 17.1M
- Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire – 16.4M
- Madame Web – 16M
- Kraven the Hunter – 13.8M
- The Equalizer 3 – 13.8M
- The Garfield Movie – 13.5M
- Anyone But You – 13M
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse – 12.8M
- Venom: The Last Dance – 12.2M
- 65 – 12M
- The Invitation – 11.5M
- Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile – 11.3M
- Bad Boys: Ride or Die – 11.2M
- The Woman King – 10.9M
- It Ends With Us – 10.7M
- Morbius – 10.2M
- Missing – 9.7M
- Father Stu – 9.6M
- The Pope’s Exorcist – 9.5M
- Gran Turismo – 9.1M
- Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody – 8.8M
- Harold and the Purple Crayon – 8M
- Love Again – 7.7M
- Thanksgiving – 7M
- Big George Foreman – 6.5M
- Insidious: The Red Door – 6.5M
- Tarot – 6.2M
- The Machine – 5M
- Here – 4.3M
- Dumb Money – 4.2M
- Saturday Night – 3.5M
The Five Most Profitable Sony Films for Netflix
A Man Called Otto – Picture: Sony Pictures
As far as we know, and based on various accounts, Netflix pays Sony for each film based on its theatrical success. The bigger the success in theaters, the costlier it is for Netflix. In this article, we will examine the most and least profitable Sony films for Netflix, i.e., those that performed better on streaming compared to their theatrical box office in the US, and those that did better in theaters compared to streaming.
We examined the domestic box office for each Sony film and, using some fairly complex mathematics (not really), we developed a formula that balances the two aspects of the matter, allowing us to create this ranking of the “most profitable” or “most efficient.”
1. A Man Called Otto
With only $ 64 M at the domestic box office, A Man Called Otto, starring Tom Hanks, could be called a flop, but it was very big on Netflix, with 20.5M CVEs over its first 14 days, one of the most-watched theatrical films on streaming ever. That Tom Hanks smile on the Netflix thumbnail is probably to thank for that.
2. No Hard Feelings
No Hard Feelings did even worse than A Man Called Otto at the box office with only 50M in takings, but the R-rated comedy starring Jennifer Lawrence did wonders on Netflix in the US, totalling 17.1M CVEs over its first 14 days on the service. Comedies have long been described as one of the movie genres that could thrive on streaming, but the hits of original comedies have not been that huge so far, except for this one.
3. Bullet Train
Bullet Train was a bit more successful in theaters than the two previous films, surpassing the $100 million mark, and it also did well on Netflix with 19.5 million CVEs over its first 14 days. Action films have always been huge on Netflix, and that certainly helped that one too.
4. Uncharted
With $148M at the domestic box office, Uncharted is the third-highest-grossing film in theaters among Sony Pictures films eligible for the output deal. Still, it’s also the most-watched Sony title on Netflix in its first 14 days of release in the US with 21.5M CVEs. So it probably cost a lot to licence for Netflix, but the reward was worth it.
5. Madame Web
One of the biggest box-office flops of 2024 is also one of the biggest superhero movies on streaming 2024 in the US, let that sink in. With 16M CVEs over its first 14 days on Netflix, Madame Web did even better than the first 14 days of Deadpool & Wolverine on Disney+ with 15.8M views. Now, granted, most of that viewing probably came from morbidly curious watchers wanting to witness the disaster that is the film, which was ridiculed right from the release of its trailer, but still, a good bargain for Netflix.
The Five Least Profitable Sony Pictures Movies on Netflix
31. Dumb Money
Netflix probably spent dumb money on this film as it only scored an estimated 4.2M CVEs over its first 14 days, after a lackluster box-office run of $14M. So, it’s probably cheap for Netflix to get, but still not enough viewing on the platform to make it worth the cost.
32. Saturday Night
Another bomb in theaters, Saturday Night did even worse on Netflix than Dumb Money, with 3.5M CVEs over its first 14 days. Is SNL one of the most overhyped shows out there? That’s a question worth asking.
33. Insidious: The Red Door
As distributors manage to eventize horror films in theaters, those have a harder time on streaming with really few hits, and Insidious: The Red Door did not do any better with 6.5M CVEs over its first 14 days compared to its $82M gross in theaters.
34. Bad Boys: Ride or Die
The second biggest grosser in theaters on this list is Bad Boys For Life, netting $193M at the domestic box office. However, things were a bit less rosy on streaming with only 11.2M CVEs over its first 14 days, basically the average of all 35 Sony films in the dataset I used for this ranking. As an action comedy, it should have performed way better, but that’s also a sequel, meaning that it is probably a bit harder for people to start with this one if they’re not familiar with the saga.
35. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was a huuuuuge hit in theaters, notching $381M in the US and Canada, making it the highest-grossing of all 35 films. When it landed on Netflix, however, the results were definitely more mixed as the animated film only totalled 12.8M CVEs in its first 14 days. It has been known that adult animation is not the preferred genre of films for Netflix subscribers, and that is one example of that. Or it could also be that people who were interested in it had already seen it in theaters a few months before and didn’t feel the need to watch it again on Netflix.
The Complete Ranking of Sony Pictures Movies By Efficiency
Here’s the complete ranking of the 35 Sony films used in this analysis.
