The highly anticipated live-action adaptation of the beloved animated series “Avatar: The Last Airbender” made a resounding debut on Netflix last week, drawing over 21.2 million views globally to take the top spot as the platform’s most-watched TV title.
Propelled by millennial nostalgia for the original fantasy series and buzz surrounding Netflix’s special effects and production values, “Avatar” immediately captured the number one spot across 92 different countries upon release. It managed to edge out the Swedish natural disaster thriller film “The Abyss” as Netflix’s single most-viewed piece of content last week.
Coming in second place amongst shows was the new Korean romantic drama “One Day,” which pulled in a respectable 7.5 million views. It was matched exactly by the sixth-season premiere of Netflix’s massively popular reality dating experiment, “Love is Blind.” Rounding out the top five TV titles were the thriller series “Can I Tell You a Secret?” at number four with 6.5 million views and “Griselda,” a newcomer drama based on a female drug lord’s story with 3.1 million views.
On the movie side, Tyler Perry’s redemption drama “Mea Culpa” took the number one film spot with 16 million total views. The Zac Efron and Russell Crowe-led comedic thriller “Players” grabbed second place on the film rankings with 7.4 million viewers. The science documentary “Einstein and the Bomb,” the animated comedy threequel “Despicable Me 3,” and the coming-of-age fantasy “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” completed the top five.
Analysts say that the runaway success of the Avatar live-action remake demonstrates the strong and enduring popularity of fantasy adventure franchises, as well as Netflix’s unique ability to leverage data and subscriber preferences in recreating and updating existing intellectual properties. However, some fans have argued that Netflix still has significant work to do when adapting storylines and characters that satisfy both newcomers and nostalgic fans of the original animated series. Either way, Hollywood is now eyeing several other classic film and TV universes, which could potentially make a successful leap into highly bankable live-action content for Netflix’s streaming audiences around the globe.
