Netflix claims The Witcher is set to be its ‘biggest season one TV series ever’ with 76M viewers tuning in to watch the fantasy show
Netflix is singing its own praises about its new Henry Cavill-starring, Game Of Thrones-esque fantasy series The Witcher.
In a letter posted Thursday to shareholders pertaining to the company’s Q4 2019 earnings, the streaming giant states that the show, which premiered on December 20th of last year, ‘is tracking to be our biggest season one TV series ever.’
‘Through its first four weeks of release, 76m member households chose to watch this action-packed fantasy,’ the streamer continued in the letter.
Showing its muscle: Netflix is singing its own praises about its new Henry Cavill-starring, Game Of Thrones-esque fantasy series The Witcher
However, the use of the phrase ‘chose to watch,’ along with a footnote stipulating a change in how they report their metrics, points to another instance of Netflix being vague about its market performance.
The footnote explains that a ‘view’ now constitutes a member choosing to watch a piece of content ‘for at least 2 minutes — long enough to indicate the choice was intentional.’
The letter goes on to state that ‘the new metric is about 35% higher on average than the prior metric,’ which only counted views of at least 70 percent of a given episode or film on the service, thereby further beefing up Netflix’s numbers.
Meaning, that if a viewer decided to watch even just 3-5 minuted of the show before switching to something else, that would still count as a full-on view for The Witcher.
Big deal: In a letter posted Thursday to shareholders, the streaming giant states the show ‘is tracking to be our biggest season one TV series ever’; Witcher star Cavill seen here at the Polish premiere in December
As a further testament to the series’ success, the letter continued, ‘the show’s launch drove up sales of The Witcher books and games around the world, and spawned a viral musical hit.’
The series is based on Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy novels, and focuses on Geralt of Rivia (Cavill), a ‘solitary monster hunter who struggles to find his place in a world where people often prove more wicked than beasts’ according to its IMDb description.
It currently holds a 66 percent rating on meta-review site Rotten Tomatoes, and has already been renewed for a second season.
Sizzling fantasy: The series is based on Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy novels, and focuses on Geralt of Rivia (Cavill), a solitary monster hunter
Riding strong: Witcher currently holds a 66 percent rating on meta-review site Rotten Tomatoes, and has already been renewed for a second season
Netflix also went so far as to compare The Witcher’s popularity to that of competing streaming streaming series The Mandalorian, on new platform Disney Plus, which caused a verifiable cultural sensation over the holidays thanks to one Baby Yoda.
The service included a Google Trends graph showing the amount of searches keyed in for the series, compared to the same for Disney’s Mandalorian, Apple TV’s Morning Show and Amazon Prime’s Jack Reacher, over the last three months of 2019.
But, as Variety pointed out, ‘the relationship between Google searches and actual time spent viewing is perhaps loose at best.’
Additionally, if the chart had measured for the Google search ‘baby Yoda’, surely the final result would have looked quite different.
Numbers: Netflix also went so far as to compare The Witcher’s popularity to that of competing streaming streaming series The Mandalorian, on new platform Disney Plus
Cute little big guy: The Mandalorian caused a verifiable cultural sensation over the holidays thanks to one Baby Yoda