‘Don’t Look Up’ in tight race with ‘Red Notice’ for Netflix’s biggest movie ever

Two Netflix films are in an invisible cutthroat competition to dominate as the streaming platform’s biggest movie ever: Don’t Look Up and Red Notice. 

The drama is unfolding via viewership data that is currently being tabulated by the streaming platform’s website that tracks such information, Netflix Top 10.

Right now, Red Notice is Netflix’s number one most popular film in English, of all time. The list where the Dwayne Johnson action flick holds the crown is tabulated by the number of hours viewed for a Netflix movie in its first 28 days — a window of time that has already closed for that film. The heist adventure film that co-stars Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot is currently sitting at the top spot with 364.02 million hours viewed in its first 28 days.

The sci-fi black comedy, Don’t Look Up, is at a close second place. The satirical film starring Leonardo DiCaprio has garnered 349.91 million hours viewed in its tabulation window so far. However, since the film was released to the streaming service on Dec. 24, 2021, there’s still time for the movie to catch up with Red Notice and maybe even overtake it in the number one spot. 

Don’t Look Up only needs to gain 14.11 million more views by Jan. 21 to overtake Red Notice. And since it’s doing slightly better in the same relative position in its tabulation window as compared to Red Notice, we’re betting it might just eke out the competition — but it’ll be a very tight race. We’ve put together a graph to help visualize how tight of a competition it really is. 

It would be an impressive feat for Netflix if Don’t Look Up overtakes Red Notice since the films were released just a month apart, which would mean the streaming service released back-to-back record-breaking movies. 

Both films are fairly entertaining crowd-pleasers that each underwhelmed critics.

With Red Notice hitting the streaming service on Nov. 12, 2021, that was also its peak week, snagging 148.72 million hours viewed — a stronger debut than Don’t Look Up’s first week at 111.03 million hours viewed. 

However, Don’t Look Up’s week two numbers — over the New Year’s Holiday in the U.S. — proved to be its strongest at 152.29 million hours viewed, a higher watermark overall than Red Notice. Since then, Don’t Look Up has done better week-over-week than Red Notice, comparatively.

Between Don’t Look Up’s Week 3 and Week 4, the viewership dwindled by about half. If that trend continues, the film could be close to tying with Red Notice in total hours viewed. Like we said, this will be a neck-and-neck race.  

We will find out if Don’t Look Up overtakes Red Notice as Netflix’s biggest movie ever — or if it falls frustratingly short of that title — when Netflix Top 10 updates its viewership data next week. The numbers get refreshed every Tuesday, according to Variety, so we should be able to find out Jan. 25.