Netflix has a calculated plan for building and sustaining as many in-house franchises as possible, and while the results have been about as hit-or-miss as you’d expect, it isn’t hard to think the company doesn’t account for sleeper successes like Lust Stories.
After all, a Hindi anthology comprised of four short films that dive into the complexities of modern love told from the perspective of Indian women – covering everything from crumbling marriages to performance issues in the bedroom – doesn’t sound as though it’s got the potential to become a certified smash hit on streaming.
And yet, it performed so well among both critics and audiences that a sequel was given the green light, with Lust Stories 2 immediately repaying that faith by becoming one of Netflix’s most-watched titles around the world. Per FlixPatrol, since being added to the content library a mere 24 hours ago, the follow-up has made its bed on the Top 10 in 29 countries – securing the number one spot in 10 of them – to stand tall as the eighth top-viewed feature on a global level.
This time around, the quartet of tales deal with a widowed and extremely devout grandmother urging her granddaughter to have sex with her fiance as often as possible before agreeing to marry him, a designer catching her maid having sex on the marital bed before becoming so enamored she decides to start watching the frisky goings-on, an amorous man having an unfortunate accident in the midst online sex that leads him directly to his ex-wife, and a prostitute married to an abusive king formulating a plan to have her son flee the royal palace.
Of course, everyone knows Netflix users love a little titillation, so maybe Lust Stories 2 flying high isn’t so much of a shock after all.
