Netflix’s slow week leads to two surprising animated films entering the Top Ten

Netflix is having a truly slow beginning to the month given that two animated films, one of which is over a decade old, have made their way into its Top Ten for the week of Jan. 30 – Feb. 5. The latest addition to the Despicable Me franchise, Minions: The Rise of Gru and the 2006 film Flushed Away have both managed to make their way onto the list.

Minions: The Rise of Gru is the fifth installment in the wildly successful franchise for Universal Studios. The film looks back to the origins of the “supervillain” Gru, focusing on his younger years. The film features more daftness from the yellow blobs as they engage in silly behavior, daft, crude jokes, and physical comedy that even Tom and Jerry would think is overkill, but hey, the kids love them. It currently sits in third place with 19.36 million views after joining the platform on Jan. 30.

Flushed Away is a surprising entry onto this list given that it came out way back in 2006. The Aardman animated film was just added to Netflix on the first of this month and features Hugh Jackman voicing a posh uptown London rat who gets flushed into the sewer system where he finds a very different type of life, and a toad who has it out for all of rat kind. The film reached over 5 million views within the week after landing on the platform, perhaps as people give in to nostalgia.

The fact that these two films are on the Top Ten (not that they are awful films per se) shows just how slow a week it has been for Netflix. They are releasing 50 percent fewer original films this year compared to 2022, as they focus on the original programming portfolio they already have. That being said, they managed to beat out some truly terrific films such as the Oscar-winning La La Land which didn’t even manage to get into the Top Ten.

Last year was a tough one for the streaming giant, with subscriptions dropping off for various reasons including, of course, the scaling back of spending thanks to the global financial problems almost all countries are facing currently, causing people to cut back on their spending in certain areas.

Next week sees the arrival of the fourth season of the popular series You which could potentially knock the current number one, You People, off the top spot.