Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston’s comedy Murder Mystery was Netflix’s most popular title in 2019, according to a most-watched list released by the streaming service. The Sandman entered a distribution deal with Netflix a few years back, starting with the 2015 western comedy The Ridiculous 6. Despite being critically panned, it was a major success for Netflix in terms of views, and was quickly followed by three more Sandler comedies (The Do-Over, Sandy Wexler, The Week Of) that drew in similarly big viewership numbers and poor reviews. As such, it came as little surprise when Sandler signed an extended deal with Netflix in 2017.
Sandler has since starred in Noah Bambauch’s critically-acclaimed Netflix dramedy The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), and released another original comedy for the streamer in the form of Murder Mystery. The film stars Sandler and Jennifer Aniston (who also worked with Sandler on 2011’s Just Go with it) as a married couple on vacation who get caught up in a murder investigation, and set a new opening weekend streaming record for Netflix earlier this year. As it turns out, it was also the service’s most popular title of 2019 altogether.
Netflix (via THR) has now unveiled its official list of most popular movies and TV shows that debuted in 2019. These rankings are based on the number of subscribers who watched at least two minutes of these movies and series in their first 28 days of release, and include non-Netflix exclusives like Incredibles 2 (which only began streaming on Netflix this year). Late December release The Witcher season 1 also made the cut, based on Netflix’s projected viewership. You can read through the whole list below.
Murder Mystery
Stranger Things 3
6 Underground
The Incredibles 2
The Irishman
The Witcher
Triple Frontier
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
The Umbrella Academy
The Highwaymen
It’s generally agreed Sandler’s Netflix movies benefit from the low barrier for entry that comes with streaming, which is why films like Murder Mystery continue to bring in huge viewership numbers despite earning (at best) mediocre reviews from critics and casual viewers alike. For the same reason, movies like Michael Bay’s latest action-thriller 6 Underground and the Zac Efron-led Ted Bundy biopic Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile were able to overcome their equally unflattering word of mouth and attract the attention of people who wouldn’t have paid to watch them in a theater, had they gone the traditional route of distribution. Mind you, that’s not to say quality doesn’t matter when it comes to being popular on Netflix. For example, The Umbrella Academy didn’t have a ton of buzz ahead of its launch this year, yet managed to break Netflix’s top ten thanks to its positive reception.
If the movie results and Sandler’s success with Murder Mystery suggest anything, it’s that name recognition plays a key role in getting people to watch stuff on Netflix (at least two minutes, anyway). All of the streamer’s most popular films had A-list stars to help sell them, in addition to bankable helmers like Bay and Martin Scorsese in the cases of 6 Underground and The Irishman. The latter is also a frontrunner among this year’s Oscar contenders, which only further helped it cause. At the same time, the combination of critical accolades and name actors doesn’t guarantee massive success on Netflix, as evidenced by the fact critical darlings Dolemite is My Name and Marriage Story were outranked by The Highwaymen (a film that earned mild praise, as a whole) on the movie side. Still, for the time being, it seems not even Scorsese is a match for Sandler on Netflix.
Source: THR
