STRAW – Picture: Netflix
Every Tuesday, Netflix updates its top 10 stats page with 40 new hourly figures of the top movies and shows of the past seven days. This post, unlike others, doesn’t merely ribbit the numbers but dives deep into the stories driving the top 10s. This week, we’ll cover Straw, FUBAR, Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, Trainwreck, Our Times, Ginny & Georgia, and more!
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from June 9th, 2025, to June 15th, 2025, we’ll use “Complete Viewings Equivalent,” or CVE, expressed in millions. That means we divide the hours viewed announced by Netflix by the runtime of films or series. It allows for better comparisons between films and series, but it’s not an audience metric. It is the minimum number of viewings if they were all complete from the first second to the last of the film or season.
1. FUBAR really is f***** up beyond any repair.
FUBAR has never lived up to its name more than now, as the launch of season 2 is nothing short of catastrophic, with only 2.2M CVEs in its first 4 days, five times less than the season 1 debut.
It’s an industrial disaster that can only lead to one outcome: outright cancellation. Sure, you might look at the following chart and think, “Oh come on, there have been other shows with second season launches in that range that got renewed.” But whether it’s That ’90s Show, The Diplomat, Sweet Tooth, or even Vikings: Valhalla, all of those series had already been renewed for two seasons right after their first season, so the performance of their second season essentially didn’t matter.
When you’re pulling in only half the numbers of Warrior Nun’s season 2 launch, it’s hard to justify any kind of renewal. It marks yet another season 2 flop this year, following The Recruit. Now, how can we explain this quite unprecedented drop?
Let’s get a bit technical here. I think this is a clear example of a season 1 that posted solid numbers, by Netflix’s own metric or in CVEs/views, but was likely accompanied by a massive drop-off rate throughout the season. In other words, a lot of people showed up for the first episode of season 1, but far fewer made it to the end. In total, the full-season numbers may have looked good enough on paper to justify a renewal, but in reality, the steep audience decline between the start and end of the season meant season 2 was never set up for success. Hence, the massive drop-off we’re seeing now.
The number of views or EVCs across a season can look nearly identical between two different shows, but those figures can mask wildly different viewing patterns, patterns that heavily influence how a second season will perform. I’ll illustrate this with two theoretical examples: the first, which I believe aligns with FUBAR, and the second, representative of a typical show that actually managed to get renewed after its second season.
With Netflix’s Top 10 rankings providing only aggregate numbers for an entire season, we don’t have access to episode-by-episode data. That means we’re left with just a “season-wide average line,” and it’s only through the performance of the following season, or Netflix’s decision to continue or cancel a show, that we can start to infer what might have happened internally across the season. With FUBAR, it’s pretty clear.
2. Straw’s massive second week
For its second week, Straw absolutely explodes, jumping by 93.4% compared to its already strong debut. When looking at the biggest jumps for films released on a Friday, comparing their first three days to the following seven, Straw lands the 4th-best increase overall. But perhaps more surprising is that Tyler Perry manages to place three films in the Top 10 of this ranking, with A Jazzman’s Blues and The Six Triple Eight making the cut despite having had much quieter starts.
How high can it climb, and can it reach the all-time Top 10? With 74.2M CVEs in its first 10 days, it currently ranks as the 14th best opening ever for a Friday-released film, but it’s showing a far more explosive growth curve than most of the titles ahead of it, so anything’s possible, especially if its third week is still big.
3. Titan: The OceanGate Disaster
The documentary about the OceanGate accident was bound to be a hit — and it delivered: with 17.4M CVEs in its first 5 days, it scored the third-best launch for a Netflix documentary released on a Wednesday, trailing only The Tinder Swindler and What Jennifer Did.
4. Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy
Another documentary this week focuses on the Astroworld concert tragedy. Its debut is more modest but still respectable, pulling in 6.2M CVEs over its first 6 days.
5. Our Times and Cheers to Life!
Let’s kill two birds with one stone with the same-day release of two Latin American films: Our Times (a charming little Mexican time-travel film) and Cheers to Life! from Brazil. The winner here is the Mexican film, which drew 7.1M EVCs in its first 5 days, while the Brazilian title managed just 4.1M. In both cases, though, their launches fall short of The Dad Quest, another Mexican film from Latin America released on a Wednesday earlier this year.
6. Ginny & Georgia Season 3
Speaking of series that show a very small drop, Ginny & Georgia shows impressive stability, with its season 3 numbers nearly matching those of season 2. To compare with FUBAR, I think here we have a show that manages to retain almost all its viewers from the start to the end of its seasons, which allows the next season to launch with essentially the same strong footing. That’s quite an impressive achievement!
7. Cocaine Air: Smugglers at 30,000ft
A French documentary series about the Air Cocaine case was released last week, achieving the best launch for a French documentary series released on a Wednesday with 4.2M CVEs in its first 5 days.
8. Aniela
Over in Poland, the trend of more misses than hits continues, with Aniela this week hitting the wall of subscriber indifference, managing only 1.2M CVEs in its first 5 days. So far, it’s been a very quiet year for Netflix Poland.
9. The Creature Cases
To finish this week’s very long report, the children’s animated series The Creature Cases returned for its fifth season, which outperformed the previous one with 2.5M CVEs in its first full week.
That’s all for this week. Feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below.
