Red Notice
Well, after dominating Netflix’s top 10 list in the US since the day of its release, Red Notice has finally lost its top spot to a new entry. And this time, it’s a TV show, not a rival film.
That would be Tiger King, season 2. Yes, that Tiger King, the show that kicked off the pandemic, and managed to squeeze out a second season due to the popularity of the first.
The second season, which Netflix is just calling “Tiger King 2,” is only five episodes compared to the original’s eight, and the interaction with Joe Exotic this time around is entirely from behind bars, given that he has been in prison for the duration of filming, given his actions against Carol Baskin in the first season. Baskin, meanwhile, unsuccessfully sued to not have footage of her used in the second season, presumably because she did not like becoming a global meme after season 1 aired.
Jeff Lowe is a major focus of the second season as a non-jailed member of the original cast, and given that he’s now really one of the only ones they can show hanging out with actual tigers. There’s also supposedly new information about Carol’s missing husband Don, but obviously if anything substantial was uncovered, that likely would have made the news already.
Tiger King season 2 is being received terribly so far, a 25% critic score and a 55% user score on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to a 85%/83% score for season 1. Everyone is accusing it of simply being a cash-in with no real added value, and yet that has not stopped it from shooting up Netflix’s top 10 list in the US, and staying there for who knows how long.
Netflix
Red Notice, meanwhile, is a monster hit for Netflix.
The $200 million blockbuster starring A-listers Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds has broken Netflix’s record as its most-watched movie. 148 million watch hours and counting, according to Netflix’s new publicly available metrics site that just went up.
The film boasts a wild disparity between critics and audiences, a 35% rotten score compared to a rock solid (no pun intended) 92% audience score. It’s not exactly clear what the disconnect is there, but audiences liked the heist comedy in a way critics did not. And in the end, audiences are what matter, and this has been an unequivocal win for Netflix and will almost certainly get a sequel or three out of this massive run. It remains the #1 movie on the service, even if Tiger King 2 has surpassed it overall.
Will Tiger King plant itself at #1 the way it did during its original debut? I doubt it, as this new batch of episodes does not seem to have the hooks of the original. I am curious to see how Cowboy Bebop does with similarly poor critical reviews during its debut weekend here. More to come.
Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to my free weekly content round-up newsletter, God Rolls.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and its audiobook, and The Earthborn Trilogy, also on audiobook.
