Netflix has dribbled out some viewing data on Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman”: The epically long mobster film was watched by 26.4 million Netflix households worldwide in the first seven days — to at least 70% completion, according to content chief Ted Sarandos.
In the first 28 days, Netflix expects about 40 million account holders to have watched “The Irishman,” according to Sarandos, speaking Tuesday at the UBS Global TMT Conference in New York. The film was released Nov. 27 on Netflix after a limited theatrical run.
Sarandos said the internal Netflix numbers — which can’t be corroborated by a third party — are all the more amazing when “you look at all the other things you can do” on a phone or watch on TV. “And people still choose to watch a film… They sit down to watch a three-and-a-half-hour movie,” he said.
Netflix has selectively doled out metrics, and Sarandos’ touting of “The Irishman” viewing comes after Nielsen last week released estimates for U.S. viewers of the movie, pegging 17.1 million unique viewers in the first five days and an average minute audience of 13.2 million viewers over that time frame. According to Nielsen, on the Nov. 27 premiere date, roughly 18% of the total viewers of “The Irishman” watched the movie in its entirety — which, according to the research firm, was on par with the premiere day of thriller “Bird Box” (18%) and greater than “El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie” (11%).
Netflix plans to start regularly releasing viewing numbers publicly, but “we’re working to try to condition the market on what it means,” Sarandos said at the UBS conference. The company’s stats, he said, aren’t comparable to box-office figures or Nielsen ratings points.
Sarandos also called out Netflix’s big Golden Globe Awards nominations haul with 34 nods across TV and film (17 in each category), including four best-picture nominees — with “The Irishman” getting five alone. Netflix picked up more nominations than any other entertainment company.
“It’s a good mark of quality — both for the industry and consumers,” Sarandos said. “Creators mostly want to be in the culture… and Netflix can do that like nobody else.”
Sarandos said he’s gotten props from folks in the industry for greenlighting “The Irishman,” which had a reported budget of upwards of $175 million. But, he quipped, “Betting that Martin Scorsese is going to make a great mob movie with Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino doesn’t seem like a big risk.”
Netflix is facing major new competition, including from Disney Plus and WarnerMedia’s forthcoming HBO Max — and Wall Street is uncertain how the streaming wars will shake up its business.
Shares of Netflix fell as much as 2.6% Tuesday after Needham & Co. analyst Laura Martin issued a downgrade note predicting that the streamer will lose 4 million U.S. subscribers in 2020. “We believe that Netflix’s premium price tier of $9-$16/month is unsustainable because its perceived price/value ratio will fall over time,” Martin wrote in her note, cutting her rating on Netflix stock from “hold” to “underperform.”
At the end of the third quarter of 2019, Netflix had 60.6 million U.S. streaming customers and a total of 158.3 million worldwide.
At the UBS conference, Sarandos, as he’s said many times before, explained that Netflix expected media companies to eventually launch their own streaming services and would “not want to sell us their programming,” which is why the company embarked on acquiring original content in 2011.
Netflix’s binge-dropping strategy for episodes has changed the creative process for TV shows, according to Sarandos. He said “House of Cards” was the first TV show written to be consumed in a binge-watching context and he noted that Netflix ordered two seasons out of the gate, which was unusual at the time.