The return of Happy Gilmore to the links brought a whole lot of eyeballs to Netflix.
Happy Gilmore 2, the 29-years-later sequel to Adam Sandler’s golf comedy, set a record on Nielsen’s streaming charts for its premiere weekend. The film amassed 2.9 billion minutes of viewing time in the United States from July 25-27, the highest single-week total for a movie in the five-year history of the ratings provider’s streaming charts. Happy Gilmore 2’s total narrowly beat the 2.89 billion minutes for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery in the final week of 2022.
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It’s worth noting that Glass Onion’s previous record came over a full week, while Happy Gilmore 2 only needed three days to top it. The 2.9 billion minutes of watch time is equivalent to about 24.58 million complete showings of the 114-minute movie, the accepted industry standard for a streaming “view.” Happy Gilmore 2 had 46.7 million views worldwide for its first weekend, according to Netflix’s internal data. That would mean the Nielsen-measured viewing on TV screens in the U.S. made up about 52 percent of the worldwide total.
Sandler and Netflix have a long-standing relationship that has produced 10 movies over the past decade. Nielsen says movies starring Sandler have racked up 61 billion viewing minutes since 2018, with Murder Mystery (9.9 billion minutes) currently leading the list.
Nielsen’s full streaming rankings for the week of July 21-27 will be released later today; this story will be updated when they’re available.