Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery Becomes Sixth-Biggest Movie Debut for Netflix, With 82.1 Million Hours

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, director Rian Johnson’s latest whodunnit, is now Netflix’s sixth-biggest movie debut, in terms of watch time. The streamer rankings for the period December 19–25 saw the Daniel Craig-led mystery follow-up topping the charts for an English-language film, recording 82.1 million hours watched during its debut week. Glass Onion dropped December 23 on the platform, which means its numbers were calculated merely over a three-day period. The second Knives Out movie underwent a limited theatrical release in select countries, a month prior.

These numbers put Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery right behind the Sandra Bullock-led The Unforgivable, which recorded 85.86 million viewed hours upon debut. As per Netflix, the current record-holder in the English-language category is Red Notice, whose key ingredient was the lead lineup of Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot, and Ryan Reynolds. The film opened with 148.70 hours of recorded viewing time upon release. The three positions between them are held by director Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up (111.03 million hours), Reynolds-led The Adam Project (92.43 million hours), and the very pricey Russo brothers feature The Gray Man (88.55 million hours).

The Knives Out sequel made its way to the Top 10 of all 93 countries Netflix tracks. Glass Onion was ranked #1 in 67 countries — India is not one of them. It helps that the Craig-led movie was released during the Christmas season, which ensured a lot of people were home during the winter holidays, especially in the Global North. Following close behind this past week is the disaster documentary The Volcano: Rescue From Whakaari with 25.1 million viewed hours, while Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio got knocked down to third place, collecting 19.6 million hours in view time. The latter held first place during the last recorded week.

The Knives Out franchise marked a big investment for Netflix last year, with the studio acquiring the rights to two sequels — including Glass Onion and Knives Out 3 — for a reported $450 million (about Rs. 3,730 crore). Craig reprised the role of detective Benoit Blanc in the sequel, heading to Greece this time, where tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton) is hosting a murder-mystery party at his lavish residence. Invited to the annual tropical getaway are the latter’s nearest and dearest friends, who turn into suspects when an actual killing occurs. The film enlists an ensemble cast including Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Kate Hudson, Jessica Henwick, Dave Bautista, and Madelyn Cline.

As for the English-language TV rankings, the Jenna Ortega-led Wednesday maintains rank one since its release last month, during which it surpassed Stranger Things 4’s record for most watch time in a debut week. The period December 19–25 sees the Lily Collins-led Emily in Paris season 3 in second place with 117.6 million hours in view time, followed by the Noah Centineo-starrer The Recruit with 95.5 million hours on Netflix.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is now streaming on Netflix.