For two weeks in a row, Netflix's Wednesday broke Nielsen records for streaming viewership.
According to Variety, Wednesday was collectively viewed for over 5 billion minutes between Nov. 28 and Dec. 4, just two weeks after its premiere on Netflix. In total, Nielsen recorded that the series earned 5.3 billion minutes viewed in its second week of availability. Based on these numbers, Wednesday is the fourth program to cross 5 billion minutes viewed. This is the second time Wednesday has broken this particular streaming record. The series first hit Netflix on Nov. 23, 2022, and while it premiered in the middle of the week, it was viewed for 5.98 billion minutes over the remaining five days.
Nielsen previously reported that Wednesday's premiere was the second biggest in Netflix's history. Despite this record-breaking premiere, the Jenna Ortega-led comedy horror is still behind the fourth season of Stranger Things, which hit 7.2 billion minutes in its first full week of availability in May 2022. Only four shows have ever broken 5 billion minutes in one week on streaming, something that Wednesday has now managed twice.
Wednesday Continues to Break Streaming Records
Netflix also reported that the series garnered 341.2 million hours viewed in its first five days on the streaming service. Overall, Wednesday has been collectively watched for over one billion total hours by Netflix users, equaling 150 million households. After just one week on the streamer, Wednesday replaced another popular series, Ryan Murphy's Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, as Netflix's second-highest-viewed English-language TV series.
At the time of writing, a second season of Wednesday has not yet been confirmed, though it was reported a renewal would be announced sometime in early 2023. The overall success of the series has even led to Netflix executives calling for an Addams Family Universe consisting of other spinoff series. In a previous interview, Netflix's head of scripted series, Peter Friedlander, said that he "anticipate[s] an entire new Addams Family universe expanding again now that you’ve had this entry."
Wednesday follows the melancholy, misanthropic Wednesday Addams (Ortega) after she is sent to Nevermore Academy, the supernatural boarding school where Gomez and Morticia Addams (played by Luis Guzmán and Catherine Zeta-Jones, respectively) first met. Apart from Ortega, the series stars Gwendoline Christie, Riki Lindhome, Jamie McShane, Fred Armisen and former Wednesday actor Christina Ricci.
Wednesday co-creators Al Gough and Miles Millar explained why they chose the titular Addams as the main focus of their series, saying that she was underexplored compared to the rest of the family. "It was a character that we all really loved, and nobody had spent a lot of time with," Gough said. "And it’s a character we’d only seen really as a 10-, 11-, 12-year-old, who is part of a family and would have a funny line in the scene, but we didn’t know much about her."
Season 1 of Wednesday is currently available to stream on Netflix.
Source: Variety