Netflix is known for keeping its viewership numbers a secret, sharing them rarely and typically only when the number is outrageously high.
Like now. @NetflixIsAJoke, the official Twitter account for the company's comedy projects, just announced that the recent Jennifer Aniston-Adam Sandler starrer Murder Mystery was viewed by around 30.9 million accounts in its first three days since premiering on June 14.
Of those 30 million, over 13 million were from within the U.S. and Canada while the other 17 million or so were from across the globe.
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With this no-way-to-really-fact-check information, the claim is that Murder Mystery broke records to be the biggest opening weekend film for Netflix (check them out, flexing "weekend opening numbers" like the Big Screen). However, we don't know fully what this means.
Did these viewers watch all of the 95 minutes or just the first 15? While I can believe that stars like Aniston and Sandler would draw in crowds of this magnitude, there's just no obvious way to know the entire basis of this number just yet.
Netflix said back in January that the Sandra Bullock horror movie Bird Box was watched by 80 million or so households in the first four weeks since it dropped on the platform on December 21. Variety reported that ratings measurement company Nielsen sort of verified this information as correct and Netflix later added it only counted accounts that watched at least 70 per cent of the film. Similar details weren't released for Murder Mystery.
Some of the other significant numbers Netflix has released in the last few months include the 40 million viewership for both You and Sex Education, 20 million households for Spanish-language original Elite, and 45 million for comic book superhero adaptation The Umbrella Academy within one month of their respective releases.
Unlike networks and cables whose viewerships are monitored by Nielsen daily, streaming sites like Netflix and Hulu have the autonomy to not reveal that in the same way, an extremely weird power to have when they release an overload of content so often.
Topics Netflix
