The Big Picture
- Netflix’s live-action adaptation of One Piece has quickly become the most-viewed English-language TV show on the platform, gaining 18.5 million views in just four days.
- Co-creators Steven Maeda and Matt Owens successfully stayed faithful to the source material, earning the series one of the highest audience scores ever on Netflix.
- Despite slipping to the third spot, Heart of Stone, starring Gal Gadot, maintains strong viewership with 5.2 million views, while You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah became the most-viewed title overall with 21.9 million views.
While the business of adapting animes is often tricky, Netflix has clearly ticked the right boxes with its latest anime adaptation, One Piece. Deservedly, the live-action series which premiered on the streamer on August 31 has, within a short 4 days, racked up an impressive 18.5 million views to become the most viewed title among English-language TV shows on the platform for this past week. On the feature side, the Adam Sandler-led You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah scored 21.9 million views to become the most-viewed movie title for the week. It is now the second week in a row that we’re seeing different titles taking the lead on Netflix’s Top 10 charts.
An adaptation of Japan’s historic highest-selling manga series by Eiichiro Oda which has sold over half a billion copies worldwide, anticipation was sky-high when Netflix revealed its plans to bring the manga to live-action. History has shown that anime adaptations are often a tough nut to crack, but the challenge was one series co-creators Steven Maeda and Matt Owens were ready to tackle head-on. Their determination paid off as the duo struck gold with the series not only quickly attracting massive viewership but also a record number of positive audience scores, one of the highest ever on Netflix. For projects such as this one, fans often look out for faithfulness to the source material, an aspect that One Piece aced convincingly well.
In her glowing review of the animated series, Collider’s Arezou Amin gave the series an A- rating, directing praises at the show’s ability to preserve character originality despite introducing new aspects to them. Amin equally commended its balanced approach to spacing out the action scenes. According to Netflix, One Piece snapped the top spot in 46 countries and debuted in the Top 10 in 93 others. The series beat out the previous TV chart-topper ‘Who Is Erin Carter?’ which slipped to the second spot with 15.8 million views. Docuseries, Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones made its debut on the list at the third spot with 5.7M views while the limited series, Painkiller, which shines the light on the genesis of America’s opioid crisis, came in at fourth after previously leading the pack during its premiere week.
‘Heart of Stone’s Viewership Remains Strong
Three weeks after its premiere on Netflix, the Gal Godot-led action-thriller, Heart of Stone is maintaining relatively strong numbers. Having opened with 30 million views, the film slipped to the third spot in the current calculating window with 5.2 million views. Animated film The Monkey King, starring Jimmy O. Yang and Bowen Yang also returned to the list peaking at the second spot with 6.6 M views. Family drama You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah which stars the Sandler family saw a huge boost almost doubling its numbers from the previous week to become the most-viewed title overall on Netflix at 21.9 million views.
