The Mother: Jennifer Lopez film surpasses two major Netflix movies in surprising achievement

Jennifer Lopez’s new film The Mother has already achieved an impressive feat on Netflix.

The Mother debuted on the streaming platform during Mother’s Day weekend in the US on 12 May.

The film stars Lopez, 53, as an assassin who comes out of hiding to protect her daughter (played by Lucy Paez) who she left earlier in life.

Omari Hardwick and The Handmaid’s Tale star Joseph Fiennes also feature in the action-thriller.

As reported by Deadline, the film has been a hit for the streamer since its release.

Data obtained by Samba TV shows that The Mother was watched by 2.8 million households in the US over its debut weekend.

To put that into perspective, this means that Lopez’s new movie has performed better (initially, at least) than two of Netflix’s hugely popular sequels: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and Murder Mystery 2.

Deadline quotes Samba’s data as showing that, in the same measurement window, Glass Onion captured 2.6 million households while Murder Mystery 2 was watched by 2.4 million.

Both films were highly anticipated sequels. Released on Netflix in December 2022, Glass Onion was the follow-up to Rian Johnson’s hit 2019 film Knives Out.

Meanwhile, Murder Mystery 2 – released in March this year – saw the return of Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston’s amateur detectives from Netflix’s 2019 comedy movie Murder Mystery.

As noted by Deadline, while The Mother initially beating out Glass Onion and Murder Mystery 2 is impressive, it does not necessarily tell the whole viewing story. Samba TV does not include mobile viewings.

Netflix is yet to release the viewing figures for The Mother. The film currently sits in the No 1 spot on the streamer’s top 10 in the UK.

During the other two films’ debut weekends, Netflix reported a total of 82.1 million viewing hours for Glass Onion and 64 million for Murder Mystery 2.

It is worth noting, though, that the streaming figures for Glass Onion will likely be impacted by the fact that the film had a one-week limited theatrical release on 23 November before it began streaming on 23 December.

Reviews for The Mother are middling, with the film currently holding a 46 per cent rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Variety called the “B-movie” a “watchable product” in which “Lopez proves she can rousingly carry a picture like this one”.

The Mother is streaming on Netflix now.