Netflix’s $200 million bet on “The Gray Man” has begun to pay off. The Ryan Gosling-led action flick, which is among the streamer’s most expensive movies to date, was viewed for 88.6 million hours during its first three days of availability after premiering on July 22. The film easily took the No. 1 position on the Netflix Top 10 chart for July 18-24.
The TV side of Netflix’s newly released rankings saw a shake-up too, as “Virgin River” Season 4 debuted at the top of the chart and finally ended the reign of “Stranger Things” Season 4. Premiering on July 20, the former was viewed for 105.4 million hours compared to the latter’s 75 million. Since the May 27 debut of “Stranger Things” Season 4 Volume 1, there has only been one other week that the series didn’t top the chart: “The Umbrella Academy” Season 3 took that spot after premiering during the June 20-26 viewing window, but the debut of “Stranger Things” Season 4 Volume 2 the following week brought the show back to No. 1.
As “Stranger Things” continues to subside — this is also the season’s first week with less than 100 million hours viewed since Volume 2’s release — it becomes more likely that other titles will dominate the chart. Additionally, the next viewing window is the season’s last chance to break the record of “Squid Game” as Netflix’s most popular TV series of all time. That statistic is measured based on viewership during a title’s first 28 days streaming, and with “Stranger Things” Season 4 still over 300 million hours behind, beating “Squid Game” will be near impossible. All previous seasons of “Stranger Things” continue to chart, though, with Season 3 in the No. 5 position (26.7 million), Season 2 at No. 6 (25.6 million) and Season 1 at No. 8 (23.2 million)
In third place was “Resident Evil,” which brought in 73.3 million hours of viewership during its first full week of availability after debuting at No. 2 the week before. “Manifest” Season 1 continues to perform after reappearing on the chart during the July 4-10 window. From July 18-24, it was viewed for 53.2 million hours, coming in fourth place. Season 2 also returned to the chart this week, landing at No. 7 with 25.4 million hours. “Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight” took ninth place during its first full week of availability (21 million), while “The Umbrella Academy” Season 3 came in at No. 10 (18.3 million).
See Netflix’s Top 10 lists for the week of July 18-24 below, beginning with English-language series and followed by non-English-language TV shows, English-language movies and then non-English-language movies.
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