Before we dive into this news, let me just say that there are good Adam Sandler movies. There aren’t many, but they do exist. Murder Mystery could be a good Adam Sandler movie. I haven’t watched it yet so I don’t know, but it could be. That being said, the news that the film broke Netflix’s record for unique opening weekend views with 30,869,863 unique Netflix accounts watching at least 70% of the film is slightly disheartening for humanity.
🚨ADAM SANDLER AND JENNIFER ANISTON BREAKING NEWS ALERT🚨
30,869,863 accounts watched Murder Mystery in its first 3 days – the biggest opening weekend ever for a Netflix Film. 13,374,914 accounts in the US and Canada, and 17,494,949 more worldwide.
— Netflix Is A Joke (@NetflixIsAJoke) June 18, 2019
This number beats out the previous record holder, Bird Box, but Netflix is still cagey for the most part about viewership. Still, these numbers validate Netflix’s decision to pay Adam Sandler top dollar to release any films he makes on the platform. For some reason, despite being burned over and over by bad movies, people keep coming back to watch them.
These numbers are massive, but one wonders how the rest of Netflix’s glut of content actually performs. Discoverability and awareness are major issues for the streamer so these big numbers look good but don’t actually give us an idea of how the average piece of original content actually performs. Until we get regularly released numbers we’re just going to have to take Netflix’s word on success.
