‘The Monkey King’ Scores Second Place On Netflix’s Global Top 10 List, ‘Miraculous’ Still Holding Strong
Despite only being available for three days between August 14-20, Anthony Stacchi’s The Monkey King was the second-most-watched English-language film on Netflix over the period.
The Monkey King, a family-targeting animated adaptation of one of China’s most popular fantasy tales, was watched for 13.1 million hours and racked up 8.1 million viewers over its first weekend on the platform. That’s well ahead of the 5.5 million hours and 3.2 million viewers Nimona managed over its first weekend, but less than the 20.8 million hours and 12.2 million views that Miraculous: Ladybug & Cat Noir, The Movie (a Netflix acquisition but categorized as an original) accumulated last month.
Speaking of Miraculous, Jeremy Zag’s musical feature adaptation of the popular animated series finished sixth during its fourth week on the platform. Fellow animated feature Despicable Me 2 was in the Top 10 for the 11th time last week, coming in at eighth.
This is all good news for Netflix’s original animation division, which struggled to make an impact with many of its 2022 releases. Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood, Wendell & Wild, and My Father’s Dragon all failed to crack Netflix’s global Top 10 list, despite being directed by A-list filmmakers Richard Linklater, Henry Selick, and Nora Twomey respectively.
On the subject of A-list filmmakers, The Monkey King is executive produced by legendary Chinese actor/filmmaker Stephen Chow, who helmed the incredible 2013 live-action adaptation of the same narrative, Journey to the West (and a raft of other modern action-comedy classics). Surely his commercial know-how and action sequence experience helped to elevate The Monkey King’s audience appeal.
Critics who reviewed the film ahead of its debut were mostly positive in their assessments, but since its premiere, most reviews haven’t been so kind. Netflix subscribers have been far more receptive to The Monkey King, which currently has a 74% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
