New Netflix action movie The Old Guard continues to ride a wave of success. It’s only been out for a week, but the Charlize Theron flick is already hitting several benchmarks. It topped Netflix’s Top 10 chart after only 48 hours and now the streaming platform is reporting that it’s on track to be seen by 72 million accounts in its first four weeks of release.
Of course, take any announcement by a successful company with a grain of salt. Netflix is notoriously secretive about sharing ratings figures and when they do, we don’t have much context for the numbers. Having said that, there are a few other notable Netflix movies to compare The Old Guard to. The Adam Sandler/Jennifer Aniston comedy Murder Mystery was seen by 31 million accounts in its first two days of release, for instance. Not bad considering that Sandler’s theatrical prowess has taken a hit in recent memory.
Netflix’s top 10 films are as follows in millions of households:
Extraction – 99M, director Sam Hargrave
Bird Box – 89M, dir. Susanne Bier
Spenser Confidential – 85M, dir. Peter Berg
6 Underground – 83M, dir. Michael Bay
Murder Mystery – 83M, dir. Kyle Newacheck
The Old Guard – 72M, dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood – projected
The Irishman – 64M, dir. Martin Scorsese
Triple Frontier– 63M, dir. J.C. Chandor
The Wrong Missy – 59M, dir. Tyler Spindel
The Platform – 56M, dir. Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
If you’re looking for even more numbers, know that another streaming sensation, Bird Box, was watched by 45 million global accounts in its first seven days. In the U.S., that number was 26 million for the first week. And then, of course, there’s the much hyped Will Smith fantasy cop thriller, Bright, which was seen by 11 million in its first three days. If it had come out during a pandemic, perhaps it would have done a little better.
But in the case of The Old Guard, all the news is good news. A sequel is already in development and fans are loving the characters as much as the set pieces, which are also impressive. An uptick in streaming views and subscriptions was inevitable given our current situation, of course, but nevertheless, Netflix has to feel good moving forward because between this and Extraction, the streaming giant is officially in the franchise business now.
