Pictures: Netflix
Welcome to a bumper issue of the Netflix top 10 report. We’ll check in with Outer Banks, which returned for its second half but isn’t doing too well in the top 10 charts. We’ll see if Arcane is the megahit it’s proclaimed to be online. We’ll also look at a few other debuts and check in with The Lincoln Lawyer while we’re at it.
In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from November 4th, 2024, to November 10th, 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.
Don’t forget you can browse through all of Netflix’s top 10s on the official site or using our top 10 search tool.
1. Outer Banks came back with a whimper
The release of the second part of Outer Banks Season 4 shows that the series has lost viewership, ranking below the returns of Emily in Paris S4, The Witcher S3, or You S4. Renewing for a final season makes complete sense, although I’m not necessarily optimistic about the viewership for this final season.
2. The Lincoln Lawyer stays strong
The Lincoln Lawyer Season 3 is still performing very well, with a negligible drop in viewership compared to Season 2A (which had additionally been favored by Netflix’s methodology). The series surpasses 17.9M CVEs within 14 days, which seems sufficient for renewal for Season 4, as there has been no decline since the previous season.
3. Meet Me Next Christmas Starts Netflix’s Christmas Slate Strong
And… the Christmas movie season has begun, and Netflix is taking it seriously this year, with almost one film per week. The first on the lineup is Meet Me Next Christmas, starring Christina Milian, and its start is quite strong for a Christmas movie released on a Wednesday. I filtered for this type of film, and it had the best opening.
Naturally, I wanted to check Netflix’s Engagement Reports to see the performance of Christmas films for the entire year of 2023. I didn’t exclude films released in 2023, which means the top two are logically new 2023 releases: Family Switch and Best. Christmas. Ever. More interestingly, behind them, the duo of The Christmas Chronicles films stands out as one of the most emblematic examples of what a new cult Christmas film on Netflix looks like, given their impressive numbers. Surprisingly, Netflix hasn’t ordered a third film in the series.
Next, we see various franchises in the Top 30, including the A Christmas Prince trilogy, The Princess Switch trilogy, and the two A California Christmas films. The rest is populated by Christmas rom-coms ranging from high quality (Holidate, Love Hard…) to less impressive offerings. Finally, it’s worth noting the strong performance of Klaus, the Spanish animated Christmas film, which is currently the second highest-rated Netflix Original film of all time on Letterboxd.
4. Pedro Paramo
Pedro Páramo is an important film for Netflix Mexico. It is an adaptation of an iconic book, and Netflix heavily promoted it, including highlighting the economic benefits for Mexico on its official site. Its launch was relatively average, with 3.9M EVCs, mostly in Latin America, which is unsurprising.
5. Is Arcane Really A Runaway Success?
Let’s delve into the Arcane, an animated series that made a big splash when Season 1 was released. Its unique release format (three batches of episodes released on Saturdays) means that we don’t have data for the opening weekend of Season 1. Therefore, comparing the launch of Season 2 to Season 1 is impossible for now, but it will be feasible next week since Season 1 has made it into the Top 10 by its second week.
Currently, I go back and forth on this launch. The 6.3M CVEs for the first batch of episodes are relatively modest. Still, it’s important to note that it’s an animated series released on a Saturday, giving it only two days to accumulate viewership. However, being a new season, one would expect most viewership to happen early on, implying that the 6.3M CVEs could be on the higher end of what each batch of episodes might achieve. That said, it’s still a solid performance for an animated series. Yet, considering that Arcane is the most expensive animated series in history, with a $250M budget for 18 episodes, there are as many positives as concerns in this launch. In hindsight, it’s unsurprising that Season 2 is the final season. If the viewership had justified the budget, additional seasons likely would have been. The decision to make Season 2 the final one might stem from the fact that the show was very well received but only by a small fraction of Netflix subscribers. It’s possible that the general public disengaged quickly, partly due to the weekly release format. If the general audience drops off early, it results in a high churn rate by the season’s end, making a strong start for the next season less likely. This is a familiar story.
I only have one comparable example in my dataset of a Saturday-released animated series with a weekly format, and it’s fairly recent: the non-Netflix Japanese series DAN DA DAN. Here, too, the figures are telling because the gap between the two shows isn’t significant, despite Arcane having received a massive promotional push and likely having a far higher production budget than the Japanese anime. So, the performance is mixed—good, but not up to expectations. Let’s wait for next week to make a more direct comparison with Season 1.
6. The Cage
This week, let’s play my favorite game: “What would you do if you were an executive at Netflix France?” with the question of whether or not to renew Franck Gastambide’s new series The Cage, set in the world of MMA. Well, this one is quite straightforward because if we look at its launch with 3.2M CVEs over its first three days, we see that it had a better start than Furies (renewed for a second season) but a slightly less impressive start than the first season of Ganglands, which was also renewed.
It seems quite far from the danger zone where season 2 of Ganglands and Thicker Than Water still lingers in limbo but are most likely canceled.
In 2024, The Cage achieved the third-best debut of a new European series released on a Friday, behind Raising Voices and Breathless, two Spanish series (with Breathless expected to be renewed for a second season).
7. Countdown: Paul vs Tyson
Before the broadcast of the boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson, Netflix released a documentary series about the preparation for the fight, with a weekly release format.
Comparisons are lacking a bit, and the only documentary series released weekly on a Thursday was Harry & Meghan, which completely outshines the one about Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. Hence, my idea for a live showdown on Netflix: Harry & Meghan pitted against Jake Paul and Mike Tyson in a ring. That would be an absolute hit if some Netflix execs convinced the ex-Royals.
8. Alien Investigation
How many extraterrestrial and UFO-themed programs are there on Netflix this year? Answer: way too many, and the audience seems alienated by the overload, as the documentary series Investigation Alien has had a launch that flopped into the lower range of docuseries released on a Friday, with just 2M CVEs. Looks like the truth is out there, but it didn’t land with the viewers!
9. Bank Under Siege
We can also see that everything’s going south, my dear, when a Spanish series about a bank heist starts off weak, with Bank Under Siege only accumulating 2.7M CVEs in its first three days, landing in the lower range of Friday releases for Spanish miniseries. Money Heist, this is not!
That’s all for this week, feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below.
