‘Cobra Kai’ Edges ‘Encanto’ & ‘Don’t Look Up’ To Win New Year’s Week Streaming Chase

Dade Hayes
·3 min read
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Riding its Season 4 premiere, Karate Kid reprise Cobra Kai topped Nielsen’s U.S. streaming chart for the week of December 27 to January 2.

With more than 2.4 billion minutes of viewing, the series outdistanced two feature films that both cracked the 2-billion-minute mark during New Year’s week. Encanto, which became accessible to all Disney+ subscribers just 30 days after its Thanksgiving debut in theaters, finished No. 2 with 2.2 billion, while Netflix’s Don’t Look Up captured about 2 billion, good for third place.

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Cobra Kai‘s latest batch of 10 original episodes arrived in the same release slot as Season 3 a year ago, with the show generating 2.6 billion minutes of streaming. The series originated as YouTube original, migrating to Netflix in 2020, ahead of YouTube’s strategic pivot back to its roots in creator-driven programming.

Encanto, which has grossed almost $230 million at the worldwide box office, had its first full week on Disney+ after starting to stream on December 24. Its month-long window marked a significant shift from previous Disney theatricals. It got 25% of its viewing in Hispanic households, and 40% of it from kids aged 2 to 11 years old.

Star-packed climate change satire Don’t Look Up is already certified as Netflix’s No. 2 most-viewed original movie ever, according to the company’s own numbers. It racked up 360 million hours of viewing during its first 28 days on the service. In its second week, Nielsen said, it grew from 1.6 billion viewing minutes the week before had viewership evenly split across the 18-34, 35-49, and 50-64-year-old age groups.

The streaming chart tracks viewing only via a TV screen, meaning mobile is not counted. Numbers from Disney+, Hulu, Amazon’s Prime Video, Netflix and Apple TV+ are released after a delay of several weeks.

One prominent title, Disney’s Star Wars-derived series The Book of Boba Fett, did not appear in the top 10. At 38 minutes long, the show’s pilot episode drew 389 million minutes of viewing, which landed it in the No. 8 spot on Nielsen’s all-originals list. Because Disney+ typically releases single episodes at a time, the series is likely to gain momentum in the coming weeks.

Two other Netflix series, The Witcher and Emily in Paris, had strong holdovers to rank fourth and fifth overall for the week with 1.8 billion and 1.1 billion streaming minutes, respectively.

Below is the week’s top 10. Unless otherwise noted, all titles are on Netflix.

Cobra Kai – 40 episodes, 2.4B viewing minutes
Encanto (Disney+) – film, 2.2B min.
Don’t Look Up – film, 2B min.
The Witcher – 16 eps., 1.8B min.
Emily In Paris – 20 eps., 1.1B min.
Cocomelon – 15 eps., 751M min.
NCIS – 354 eps., 730M min.
Criminal Minds – 317 eps., 636M min.
The Wheel of Time (Prime Video) – 8 eps., 630M min.
Seinfeld – 166 eps., 561M min.

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