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Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston’s Netflix film ‘Murder Mystery’ has taken the title for the most viewed Netflix movie in an opening weekend ever
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Almost 31 million people watched the film in just three days of its release
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The big question is do people actually love Sandler or is Netflix just that massive now that its new movies are always going to rake in big numbers?
You either love him or hate him, Adam Sandler, a titan in the comedic genre of Hollywood. He has a formula that a lot of people slate but it’s one that clearly works for both him and now Netflix. His ‘Murder Mystery’ film alongside Jennifer Aniston has had the biggest opening weekend in terms of viewership in Netflix’s history.
In just three days, 30,869,863 people decided to watch the film on their laptop or television. That’s the highest number of viewers in an opening weekend ever for a Netflix film. 13,374,914 accounts in the US and Canada, and 17,494,949 more worldwide, that’s a lot of Sandler. In fact, there’s always been a lot of Sandler on Netflix, back in 2017, the company revealed that people had streamed over half a billion hours of Sandler goodness on the service.
The premise of the film is as follows: “A New York cop and his wife go on a European vacation to reinvigorate the spark in their marriage. A chance encounter leads to them being framed for the murder of an elderly billionaire.”
Though near 31 million people found that plot interesting enough to garner a watch, the film has not garnered very good ratings. The film has a 6.1 score on IMDB, a 45% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 38% on Metacritic.
The question to be considered though is if this milestone is due to some weird power Sandler has to draw people in, or if it is just due to the sheer size and growth of Netflix. Back in 2011 the service had 21.5 million paid subscribers, 2014 it had 50.65 million, and now in 2019 it’s closing in on the 150 million mark.
The successful viewership of films like ‘Murder Mystery’ and ‘Birdbox’ (which raked in 45 million viewers in just a week) could less be about Netflix realising the secret to alluring movies and more about the fact there are just millions of extra people tuning into the service now. In another three or four years, we may see a new Sandler flick break records again, simply because by then probably everyone and their dog will have a Netflix account.
