Leave the World Behind, filmmaker Sam Esmail's movie adaptation of Rumaan Alam's super-dark, ultra-paranoid best-selling novel about foreign invasion starring Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke, just had Netflix's best movie performance in about a year.
The two-hour and 18-minute title, which debuted Dec. 8, collected an impressive 98.7 million hours viewed on Netflix's measured global platform, not only making it the top program in Netflix's weekly Global Top 10 rankerfor the week of Dec. 4-10, but also the best performing Netlix movie or TV show since season 4 of Sex Education premiered back in mid-September.
The film stars also Mahershala Ali and Kevin Bacon, and was produced by Higher Ground Productions, the company founded by former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle.
Leave the World Behind follows one family’s journey after widespread technological failures lead to societal collapse.
It had Netflix's best movie performance since Knives Out sequel The Glass Onion debuted in mid-December of 2022.
Meanwhile, among Netflix TV series, new comedy-action show Obliterated -- which comes from the producing team behind Cobre Kai -- built on its premiere week audience and came in at the top spot for English-language series with 61.5 million hours viewed.
At No. 2, the premiere of youthful romantic drama My Life with the Walter Boys debuted to 57.4 million hours streamed. (The series is based on Ali Novak’s eponymous biography, which was initially published on Wattpad when Novak was only 15 years old.)
And reality competition spinoff Squid Game: The Challenge held up respectably from its strong weeks 1 and 2 performances, capturing 54.1 million viewing hours.
