“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” drew the largest weekly viewership on record for a streamed movie, according to figures released Friday by Nielsen.
Viewers spent 2.886 billion minutes watching the Netflix mystery from Dec. 26-Jan. 1, its first full week of release. The previous record was 2.725 billion minutes for “Hocus Pocus 2” the week of Sept. 26-Oct. 2, 2022, which included the first three days the fantasy comedy was available on Disney+.
Viewership was up 29.7% from the 2.252 billion minutes watched the previous week when it was available for three days, now the fourth-highest weekly total for a movie.
Nielsen has released weekly streaming figures since January 2020.
The top three programs were unchanged from the previous week — “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” and “Wednesday.”
“Emily in Paris” rose one spot to fourth with 1.354 billion minutes watched of its 30 episodes. The Netflix comedy was watched for 1.389 billion minutes the previous week, which included the first five days its 10-episode third season was available.
There were three series and one movie in the latest top 10 that were not in the previous week’s.
“Yellowstone” returned to the top 10 after a two-week absence. The Paramount Network neo-Western was fifth with 1.042 billion minutes watched of its 39 episodes on Peacock.
“The Witcher: Blood Origin,” was eighth with 912 million minutes watched of the four episodes of the Netflix fantasy drama which was released Dec. 25.
“Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical” was ninth with 839 million minutes watched it the first full week it was available on Netflix following its Dec. 25 release.
“Treason” was 10th with 790 million minutes watched of the five- episode thriller released by Netflix Dec. 26.
Three of the four programs dropping out of the top 10 were Christmas movies — “Home Alone,” which streams on Disney+, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “Elf,’ which both stream on HBO Max.
The long-running CBS action drama “NCIS” which streams on Netflix also dropped out of the top 10.
There were eight Netflix series or movies in the top 10 along with one series each that stream on Prime Video and Peacock. Nielsen also announces streaming viewership of Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max and Hulu programming.
The top 10 consisted of six original streaming series, two movies and two acquired programs.
The top 10 programs were “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”; “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan”; “Wednesday”; “Emily in Paris”; “Yellowstone”; “The Recruit”; “CoComelon”; “The Witcher: Blood Origin”; “Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical”; and “Treason.”
The figures reflect only television set viewing, including such television-connected devices as Roku and Apple TV. Mobile-only viewing is not included in Nielsen’s streaming measurement systems.
While Nielsen releases weekly prime-time broadcast and cable ratings two days after the end of the week, except for holidays, viewership figures for streaming services are not released until 25 days after the end of the week because it takes more time to completely capture assets to report and aggregate streaming viewing, according to Nielsen.
Nielsen has announced it plans to shorten the release window for the viewership figures from streaming programming in the coming months.
