Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending September 25th, 2022. This we’ll be covering DAHMER’s huge launch, Lou staying strong and the beginning of the prestige movies of 2022.
Netflix updates its top 10 stats page weekly with 40 new hourly figures of the top movies and shows of the past 7 days. If you want to browse the top 10 hourly data easily, visit our tool.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from September 18th to September 25th, 2022, 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 launch of A Jazzman’s Blues and Athena signal the beginning of the prestige movies season for Netflix.
Happy prestige movies season to anyone who celebrates it! Every year, between the end of September and the beginning of January, Netflix releases the biggest films of its line-up, some made to be blockbusters. Still, others made to become critical darlings that could earn the streamer some nominations and even wins at the Oscars and the other awards ceremonies.
This year, A Jazmman’s Blues by Tyler Perry and Athena by Romain Gavras were the first to be released, while Blonde is the next and is available today (September 28th).
So how did they do? Both did well per prestige movie standards, with 4.3 million CVE in three days for Athena and 3.7 million CVE in three days for A Jazzman’s Blues.
It’s on par with other prestige movies released on a Friday in my dataset but still quite far from The Lost Daughter.
2. Lou is another proof that external marketing maybe not as useful as the homepage and the in-app recommendations.
A common complaint regarding Netflix is that it does not do enough marketing to inform people that some programs are being released. If you compare that to what major movie studios are doing to promote – expensively – films in theaters, I guess it is a fair assessment. But Netflix has the hottest commodity around when it comes to promoting content: its homepage and the in-app recommendations.
Lou is another example of that.
The long-gestating film came out last Friday with little to no marketing around it, and it still managed to score the 16th biggest launch of any Netflix film released on a Friday out of 99 in my dataset, with the equivalent of 22.7 million CVE.
3. DAHMER makes a killer launch.
DAHMER could also be an example of how the homepage and in-app recommendations may be enough to promote a series to subscribers, as the series was shadow-dropped only 5 days after the reveal of its release date.
Sure, it’s a Ryan Murphy-produced true crime series about one of the most famous serial killers, so it’s bound to garner attention. But the numbers are excellent, with 22,2 million CVE in only 5 days. That’s double what True Story, a limited series starring Kevin Hart, got when it was released on Thanksgiving last year.
So it’s pretty huge, and it may even surpass Netflix’s expectations.
It’s also the best launch of any new Netflix series released on any day of the week in my dataset. It even beats returning series such as season 2 of Emily in Paris, also released on a Wednesday. However, it’s not a success on par with the last season of Stranger Things or even the last season of Money Heist, which managed to get 40+ million CVE in just three days.
It will be interesting to see how it evolves over the next few weeks.
The ratings of the series on IMDb are excellent, with an 8.4/10 average, so it might have quite long legs.
Its job was to boost the number of subscribers in the US for the third fiscal quarter of 2022, so we’ll see if it managed just that in October.
4. A follow-up on Heartbreak High
Heartbreak High – Picture: Netflix
Last week, it was pretty clear that Heartbreak High was a flop, but the series managed to claw its way into the Top 10s this week.
It’s still not great with only 2.8 million CVE, so we’ll call this one a semi-flop.