‘Borat 2’ Cracks Nielsen Top 10 Streaming List

Sacha Baron Cohen comedy “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” landed a spot on Nielsen’s weekly top 10 list ranking of streaming titles — a rare feat for a movie, but not the biggest turnout of late for a feature film on the chart.

According to Nielsen, “Borat 2” registered an estimated 570 million minutes viewed in the U.S. for the week of Oct. 19-25, landing at the No. 8 spot on the ranking. By comparison, Adam Sandler’s “Hubie Halloween” generated 969 million minutes in its first week on Netflix, while Netflix’s “Enola Holmes” starring Millie Bobby Brown pulled in 1.165 billion minutes after its September debut.

Meanwhile, perennial fave and Emmy-winner “Schitt’s Creek” stood atop Nielsen’s list for the week of Oct. 19-25, with 1.06 billion minutes streamed on Netflix. Naturally, given the show’s 80-episode corpus, overall viewing of the series would be in a position to register higher volume than any single movie.

Amazon, which like other subscription-streaming providers is tight-fisted with viewership data, last month said that “tens of millions” of Amazon Prime Video users globally watched “Borat 2” over its opening weekend. The film premiered on the platform Oct. 22.

According to Amazon, within the first few hours of the “Borat“ watch party on the night of its premiere, more than 1 million fans tuned in to a live Q&A with Baron Cohen’s Borat and participate in a worldwide dance party.

The film, which marks the directorial debut of Jason Woliner, features the return of Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev (Baron Cohen) who comes back to the U.S. in a bid to redeem his homeland after tarnishing the country’s reputation in 2006 documentary “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”

Nielsen’s Streaming Top 10 ranking is based on the amount of minutes consumers who have access to platforms streamed during the week. The measurement firm tracks viewing on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Disney Plus.

A caveat: The Nielsen estimates are estimated based on viewing on connected TVs, excluding mobile devices and computers. The streaming companies don’t typically release viewing numbers, or do so selectively. And Amazon, for one, doesn’t even disclose exactly how many Prime members it has. The ecommerce giant most recently disclosed in January 2020 that it had topped 150 million Prime customers worldwide.

Here’s the latest Streaming Top 10 from Nielsen (for the week of Oct. 19-25):

1. “Schitt’s Creek” (Netflix) – (80 episodes): 1.058 billion minutes

2. “The Office” (Netflix) – (192 episodes): 869 million minutes

3. “The Haunting of Bly Manor” (Netflix) – (9 episodes): 838 million minutes

4. “Unsolved Mysteries (2020)” (Netflix) – (12 episodes): 789 million minutes

5. “The Great British Baking Show” (Netflix) – (61 episodes): 676 million minutes

6. “Grey’s Anatomy” (Netflix) – (361 episodes): 660 million minutes

7. “The 100” (Netflix) – (100 episodes): 657 million minutes

8. “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” (Amazon) – 570 million minutes

9. “Criminal Minds” (Netflix) – (277 episodes) – 567 million minutes

10. “The Queen’s Gambit (2020)” (Netflix) – (7 episodes) – 551 million minutes