Netflix said its new action movie Red Notice drew 277.9 million viewing hours on its global platform from Nov. 12-21, putting it on pace to easily surpass the first-28-days performance of the streaming service's most successful English-language movie release of all time, 2018 sci-fi drama Bird Box.
Starring Sandra Bullock in a scary alien-invasion story concept, Bird Box drew just over 282 million hours of watching back in December 2018 - January 2019, when the platform had around 140 million subscribers globally. Netflix ended September of this year with around 214 million paid users.
Also: Netflix Just Created a Powerful 'New Weapon' to Recruit Talent, Analyst Says
The data comes courtesy of Netflix's new "Global Top 10" website, which was just updated Tuesday to detail the most popular films and TV shows on Netflix from Nov. 15-21. Netflix also included the all-time top English language list below in the ranker this week:
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story), Red Notice stars Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot in USA Network-lite, globally situated caper drama, infused with top-shelf production values.
Yes, Red Notice has been accused of being somewhat formulaic, right down to the rather exhausting-by-now re-use of the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" in its soundtrack.
And the 35% score on critic-reviews aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes probably tells you something about Red Notice's box office potential. But Netflix, which offers easy-to-watch Red Notice in its vast all-you-can-view smorgasbord, isn't playing that kind of checkers anymore.
By traditional media standards, the amount of sheer viewer engagement being generated by Netflix content these days is hard to imagine.
For example, Netflix's Korean-language series sensation Squid Game recently earned the distinction of having the most watched first-28-day debut of any kind of show, film or series, with 1.65 billion global viewing hours. Comparing series to movies is a bit apples-and-oranges when the metric is viewing time--Squid Game watchers binged through nine 55-minute Season 1 episodes, many of them multiple times. Red Notice watchers just saw one two-hour movie.
In any event, Red Notice has performed so well with audiences globally, according to Netflix, that it uplifted other action movies in the Netflix catalog starring the film's talent.
Central Intelligence, a similarly tongue-in-cheek 2016 comedy-action film pairing Dwayne Johnson with comedian Kevin Hart, drew 14.91 million viewing hours on Netflix, ranking it in Netflix's 10 most watched English-language films for Nov. 15-21. Similarly, 2019 Netflix action flick 6 Underground, starring Reynolds and directed by action movie maven Michael Bay, also finished in the English-language movie top 10 with 7.77 million viewing hours on platform.
Of course, Red Notice was easily the top ranked English language film title on Netflix last week, garnering 129.1 million of its global viewing hours from Nov. 15-21. The film debuted on Netflix on Nov. 12.
As far as English-language TV shows, season 1 of Netflix's collaboration with Riot Games, Arcane, drew just over 38.4 million viewing hours to finish No. 1. The second-season debut of Tiger King, meanwhile, finished No. 2 with just over 30 million viewing hours.
■
