“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” drew the third-largest weekly viewership ever for a streamed movie, ending “Wednesday’s” four-week streak as the most-watched streamed program, according to figures released Thursday by Nielsen.
Viewers spent 2.252 billion minutes watching the Netflix mystery film between Dec. 23-25, the first three days it was available. Only “Hocus Pocus 2” (2.725 billion minutes the week of Sept. 26-Oct. 2, 2022) and “Wonder Woman 1984” (2.252 billion minutes the week of Dec. 21-27, 2020) had higher viewership among streamed movies.
Nielsen has released weekly streaming figures since January 2020.
There were three other movies and two series in the top 10 covering Dec. 19-25 that were not in the previous week’s.
“Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” was second with 1.834 billion minutes watched of its 24 episodes, including the eight-episode third season of the Prime Video political action thriller that was released Dec. 21.
“Emily in Paris” was fifth with 1.389 billion minutes watched of its 30 episodes, including the 10-episode third season of the Netflix comedy that was released Dec. 21.
“Home Alone” was seventh, with viewers spending 926 million minutes watching the 1990 film comedy on Disney+.
“How the Grinch Stole Christmas” was eighth with viewers spending 864 million minutes watching the 2000 fantasy comedy film on HBO Max.
Another Christmas film streaming on HBO Max, “Elf” was ninth with 836 million minutes watched.
Dropping out of the top 10 were the Netflix documentary series “Harry & Meghan”; the HBO Max black comedy-drama anthology “The White Lotus”; the 2013 thriller film “Prisoners,” which streams on Netflix; the 1994-2004 NBC comedy “Friends” which streams on HBO Max; the 2005-20 CBS police procedural “Criminal Minds” which streams on Hulu; and the Netflix drama “Firefly Lane.”
“Wednesday” was third with 1.797 billion minutes streamed of the eight episodes of Netflix’s supernatural mystery.
There were six Netflix series or movies in the top 10 along with two movies that stream on HBO Max and one on Disney+ and one Prime Video series. Nielsen also announces streaming viewership of Apple TV+, Hulu and Peacock programming.
The top 10 consisted of four original streaming series, four movies and two acquired programs.
The top 10 programs were “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” ; “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan”; “Wednesday”; “The Recruit”; “Emily in Paris”; “CoComelon”; “Home Alone”; “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”‘ “Elf”; “NCIS.”
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.
