Netflix’s (NFLX) Glass Onion Hits the Right Chord With Viewers


Netflix


NFLX

recently revealed that

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

has grabbed the top spot in the list of films (English) for the week Dec 19-25 with 82.1 million hours viewed.


Glass Onion

is the sequel to the 2019 movie

Knives Out

that introduced Daniel Craig as the detective Benoit Blanc. The latest movie finds Blanc in Greece with the billionaire tech industrialist Miles Bron played by Edward Norton.

Netflix secured the rights to two sequels to the Knives Out franchise for $450 million in 2021. The streaming giant has reportedly spent roughly $40 million to produce

Glass Onion

.

The mystery movie had a limited theatrical run in late November at 693 theaters in the United States. Per Box Office mojo data,

Glass Onion

collected $13.3 million from theaters, thanks to the extended Thanksgiving weekend.


Glass Onion

has been watched by roughly 35 million households (82.1M view hours divided by 2.3 hours of runtime) from more than 93 countries within three days of its release on Netflix.

Glass Onion

’s initial strong viewership trend bodes well for Netflix’s prospects in the holiday season.

Netflix, Inc. Price and Consensus

Strong Content Benefits Netflix in Holiday Season

Netflix’s latest Top-10 list reflects the benefit of a strong content portfolio that is driving viewership in the all-important holiday season.


The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari

was the second most-watched English film with 25.1 million hours viewed.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

took the third position with 19.7 million hours viewed.

In the non-English film category,

The Big 4

continued to maintain its dominance with 19.7 million hours viewed.

A Not So Merry Christmas

and

Private Lesson

were #2 and #3 for the Dec 19-25 week with 17.8 million and 9.9 million hours viewed, respectively.

In the television (English) category, season one of

Wednesday

maintained its #1 position for the fifth consecutive week. Season 3 of

Emily in Paris

was the second most-watched show with 117.6M hours viewed. Season 1 of

The Recruit

was placed at the #3 spot with 95.6 million hours viewed.

In the television (non-English) category, season 2 of

Alice in Borderland

grabbed the #1 spot with 61.2 million hours viewed. Season 1 of

Alice in Borderland

and

Reborn Rich

were the #2 and #3 shows with 18.7 million and 17 million hours viewed, respectively.

Netflix’s Popularity Suffers From Stiff Competition

Netflix has been suffering from strong competition from the likes of

Disney


DIS

,

Comcast


CMCSA

and

Apple


AAPL

in the saturated streaming space.

Netflix shares have declined 53.5% in the past year compared with the Zacks

Consumer Discretionary

sector’s fall of 52%. NFLX shares have also underperformed Apple, Comcast, and Disney shares, which have declined 27.6%, 30.9% and 44.3%, respectively.

Moreover, Netflix’s ad-supported plans have failed to ignite user interest per the latest data from subscription analytics firm Antenna, cited by The Wall Street Journal.

The ad-supported plan accounted for only 9% of new Netflix sign-ups in the United States during November. Netflix launched its ad-supported service on Nov 3 with the basic plan costing $6.99 a month in the country.

Per Antenna, 57% of subscribers either re-joined Netflix or signed up for the first time while 43% downgraded from higher-priced plans. Moreover, by the end of November, 0.2% of subscribers in the United States were on Netflix’s ad-supported plan.

Disney followed in the footsteps of Netflix to offer its ad-supported tier starting Dec 8, 2022. The company’s streaming service Disney+, as of Oct 1, 2022, had 164.2 million paid subscribers compared with 118.1 million as of Oct 2, 2021.

Apple’s streaming service, Apple TV+, continues to gain recognition with its critically acclaimed and popular shows like Ted Lasso.

Comcast’s Peacock also offers a free-to-watch tier with ad support that has about 40,000 hours of content. Peacock is well poised to grow, owing to its vast library of IPs and new productions.

Nevertheless, Netflix’s strong content portfolio is expected to help it win new subscribers during the holiday season. At the end of the third quarter, Netflix had 223.09 million paid subscribers globally.

This Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company currently expects to gain 4.5 million paid subscribers in fourth-quarter 2022. You can see

the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here

.


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