Ron Howard’s Panned ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ Was the 7th-Most Streamed Program Over Thanksgiving

Anticipation is high for Christmas Day movie streaming viewership with “Wonder Woman 1984” debuting on HBO Max, Disney Pixar’s “Soul” coming to  Disney+, and Netflix superhero offering “We Can Be Heroes” and the Amazon original movie “Sylvie’s Love” also streaming in for Christmas. However, Thanksgiving was also a big week for streaming movies, according to Nielsen’s Top 10 streaming programs list for Thanksgiving Week. The Netflix movie “The Christmas Chronicles 2” was the second-most-watched streaming program during Thanksgiving Week, with more than 1.5 billion minutes viewed, according to Nielsen. The Kurt Russell-Goldie Hawn movie premiered on Nov. 25, 2020, so Nielsen’s Nov. 23-Nov. 29 report tallied its first five days of viewership. Ron Howard’s critically panned “Hillbilly Elegy,” also on Netflix, ranked seventh with 787 million minutes viewed over its first six days. “The Queen’s Gambit” was one slot above “Hillbilly,” and still drew more than 1 billion minutes viewed. “Hillybilly Elegy” currently has a 26% among the critics on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 16% rating among “Top Critics.” If there was a “Certified Rotten” label, Howard’s movie would have it. This week, as you probably guessed by now, Netflix again dominated Nielsen’s weekly report. Only one non-Netflix program, Disney+’s “The Mandalorian,” infiltrated the Top 10 for the final full week of November. The “Star Wars” series ranked fourth for the week with more than 1.2 billion minutes viewed. Nielsen’s streaming viewership includes SVOD subscribers 2 and older. Netflix occasionally releases its internal viewership numbers. When the streaming service does so, it usually counts the first 28 days of a TV series or movie’s release. The prior week, after becoming the first program to three-peat atop Nielsen’s Top 10 SVOD Programs, “The Queen’s Gambit” was knocked down to No. 2 by a new season of “The Crown.” (Back seasons of “The Crown” are also rolled up into the total-minutes-viewed number, so that available of catch-up viewing certainly helps.) Netflix’s “The Crown” repeated as No. 1 this week, with 2.215 billion minutes viewed. Though they’re both about that “old” at this point, we do not yet have Netflix’s numbers for either “The Christmas Chronicles 2” or “Hillbilly Elegy.” When reached, Netflix, which considers any streaming session of a program that lasts for two minutes of longer to be a “view,” declined to provide its own viewership numbers for this story. Via its panel, Nielsen only measures viewing on televisions, and not on phones, tablets or laptops.