Welcome to your weekly roundup of the biggest stories from the top 10 figures per hour on Netflix for the week ending July 10, 2023. Titles covered this week include Bird box Barcelona, Survival of the thickest, attacking player, first sonic, burn down the houseand Nimona.
Every Tuesday, Netflix updates its Top 10 Stats page with 40 new figures per hour for the top movies and shows from the past seven days. If you want to easily explore the top 10 data by hour, check out our tool, which has just been updated with even more Nielsen top 10 data.
Note: In this report of Netflix hours watched from July 10, 2023 to July 16, 2023, we will use «Full View Equivalent» or CVE, expressed in millions. That means we divide the hours watched advertised by Netflix by the running time of the movies or series. It allows for better comparisons between movies and series, but it is 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 movie or season.
1. Bird Box: Barcelona is seen and observed
Spanish spin-off of Netflix’s first hit movie bird box is off to a pretty good start with 16.3 million CVEs through its opening weekend, one of the best launches ever for a European Netflix movie. Now, it’s not doing the numbers to bird box 2 presumably it would, but this could be enough to crack the international Top 10 all-time in the coming weeks if it holds up well in the coming weeks.
another sign Bird Box: Barcelona does not behave like a bird box 2 for the public is that the first bird box is nowhere to be seen in any weekly Top 10 for the past week. Usually when a sequel is released, the first movie makes it back into the Top 10 as well. Not in this case.
2. Nimona hold up very well
We said a few weeks ago that Nimona He didn’t get off to a particularly good start, but over the past two weeks, his retention has been impressive.
In its third week, its hours watched only dropped by 30%, the best retention for any Netflix animated movie released in the last two years, better than the sea beast either back inside. Now, sure, the movie started very low, but it could be one of the longest sleeper hits of the summer for Netflix.
3. Survival of the thickest might not be fit enough to survive
Last week saw the release of another US Netflix series called Survival of the thickest and adapted from the life story of Michelle Buteau. With 3.7 million CVEs in its first four days, it’s one of the lowest launches of the year for a new English series, on par with Unstable. So it could still be renewed, just like Unstable it did (before the strike so we’ll see) but it doesn’t look good.
4. attack player is the latest sports docuseries to fail to significantly resonate with global audiences.
You can’t blame Netflix for trying to launch a sports docu-series in 2023: fully operational (Golf), breaking point (tennis), Tour de France: Unchained (cycling) and now attack player about the NFL. But like the others, attack player it had a pretty weak launch with only 3.3 million CVEs during its first 5 days (and we can assume most of those came from the US).
Netflix will have a few other attempts this year with the recently announced docu-series about the US women’s soccer team and their adventure during the 2023 World Cup due to premiere this fall.
5. first sonic slows to a stop with its season 2
In December, season 1 of first sonic made a great launch, one of the best for an animated series in recent months. Since then, it’s been very quiet for animated series, with only one of them making it into a weekly Top 10. season 2 of first sonic He broke the curse, but let’s not celebrate just yet, as his rate of decline since Season 1 is very steep, from 7.8 million CVEs to 2.4 million CVEs.
6. Is Japan the new South Korea for Netflix? not yet but burn down the house shows promises.
In the past few months, Netflix Japan has been constantly producing new series that slowly increased their viewership one by one. burn down the house premiered last week and made the best launch for a new Japanese Netflix series, surpassing The days and Sanctuary.
It still needs a big hit to truly become a new South Korea for Netflix, but it’s been very encouraging so far.