Netflix’s ‘Scrooge: A Christmas Carol’ Bucks Trend, Cracks Streamer’s Top 10 Global List
Netflix animated features have mostly struggled to hit the streamer’s global Top 10 list this year, but with Scrooge: A Christmas Carol, that trend has finally been reversed.
Despite not featuring the name recognition of Henry Selick and Jordan Peele’s Wendell & Wild, Nora Twomey’s My Father’s Dragon from Cartoon Saloon, or Richard Linklater’s Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood, Scrooge was able to accomplish what none of those films could do by cracking the list.
The film, which launched December 2 on the platform, debuted in the #9 spot of the streamer’s weekly global English-language films list (Nov. 28-Dec. 4) with 8.17 million hours of viewing time. Scrooge made the weekly Top 10 in six individual territories, though they’re not the ones we might’ve expected: Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
What Scrooge does have is brand recognition, having been adapted from the Dickens holiday chestnut. In terms of viewing hours, animated films on Netflix have regularly benefited more from being familiar than from being good. Movies like Marmaduke, Riverdance: The Animated Adventure, and The Boss Baby have each breached the Top 10 in 2022.
Scrooge was directed by Stephen Donnelly and produced Produced by Timeless Films in association with Axis Studios.
Not all Netflix original features have struggled to achieve Top 10 status, however. This summer, Chris William’s The Sea Beast not only featured there for several weeks, but the nautical adventure became the streamer’s most-viewed original animated film while doing so.
Netflix has also not yet released its highest-profile animated original of 2022, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, which hits the platform this Friday. We’ll be tracking that film’s performance for sure.
