It looks like quite a few families decided to watch Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman during the Thanksgiving weekend when the film hit the streamer. According to Nielsen, about 2.6 million viewers streamed the film when it launched on November 27 and it’s a number that held relatively steady for its first five days.
Nielsen said the film gathered a total average audience of 13.2 million viewers in its first 5 days of streaming availability. It opened theatrically on November 1 after having its world premiere in late September at the New York Film Festival but has been shunned by major theater circuits like AMC, Regal, and Cinemark after Netflix declined to abide by traditional windows.
Netflix, of course, hasn’t really released official data, although just yesterday they said they will be releasing more data in the future on their subscriber’s viewing habits (likely because people want to know who is watching high-profile releases such as this one). It should also be noted that Nielsen only tracks U.S. consumption, so the snapshot is just part of the picture.
The film peaked in viewership on its third day, when it reached 3.1 million viewers, and the Saturday (November 30) was also healthy, with 2.8 million viewers. And, although the film runs 210 minutes, according to the Nielsen numbers, a large number of Netflix viewers watched the entire film in one sitting. On the Wednesday premiere day, 751,000 viewers saw it in its entirety, which was about 18% of the total population sampling it. On Friday, November 29, about 930,000 took it all in at once. The 18% level puts the film on par with Bird Box a year ago and far surpasses the full-film level of El Camino earlier this year, which managed just 11%.
This caps off a very good week for The Irishman which was named Best Picture of the Year by the National Board of Review and the NYFCC earlier this weekend, beginning its road as a potential frontrunner for Best Picture at the Oscars.
