Love him or hate him; Adam Sandler has been invading living rooms for the better part of three decades.
Let’s be brutally honest too; most of his films are terrible but there are some gems in his catalogue like “Happy Gilmore,” “The Wedding Singer” and “Billy Madison.” But those were all 1990s movies and Sandler hasn’t done anything great in a really long time.
But that all just changed recently when Adam Sandler just set a new benchmark record for his Netflix comedy “Murder Mystery.”
Netflix is not only the biggest streaming service in the world; it’s also one of the biggest media companies as well.
There was a brief moment in time when Netflix snatched The Walt Disney Company’s title as being the biggest media empire in the stock market, but then they acquired Hulu and 21st Century Fox and it’s going to be a lot harder for them to catch up.
Netflix has a reputation for being incredibly kind to its artists and when they acquire new original content they pay through the roof. A great example of this recently was when the global streaming service paid $60 million to Dave Chappelle for three of his standup routines. They also gave Ricky Gervais a mind-boggling $40 million for “Humanity.” That’s insane.
The thing you have to understand about Netflix is that they’re extremely private about their numbers. It’s, ironically, calculated.
Their approach seems to be that if nobody knows what kind of numbers they generate then they don’t have to pay artists backend percentages like the rest of Hollywood does. That’s probably why Chappelle and Gervais got that kind of multimillion-dollar salaries.
Several years ago, Adam Sandler signed a four-picture deal with Netflix and also recently released “Adam Sandler: 100% Fresh” exclusively on the platform, which was surprisingly good. It was so good; in fact, it made one question why weren’t his last dozen movies this funny?
Then came his new comedy starring Jennifer Aniston, “Murder Mystery,” designed to be a funny version of an Agatha Christie novel. It was pretty good. Critics hated it; fans loved it, in classic Adam Sandler fashion.
Again, rarely does Netflix disclose their numbers but “Murder Mystery’s” numbers were so fantastic, they couldn’t help but gush about them publicly.
An eye-popping 30.8 million separate accounts watched “Murder Mystery” in its first 3 days, shattering the previous record set by “Bird Box,” which only garnered 45 million total views in its first 8 days of release.
🚨ADAM SANDLER AND JENNIFER ANISTON BREAKING NEWS ALERT🚨
30,869,863 accounts watched Murder Mystery in its first 3 days – the biggest opening weekend ever for a Netflix Film. 13,374,914 accounts in the US and Canada, and 17,494,949 more worldwide.
— Netflix Is A Joke (@NetflixIsAJoke) June 18, 2019
Sandler has done incredibly well for Netflix.
So well in fact that Netflix signed a four-movie deal with Sandler in 2015, and doubled down with a deal for another 4 movies in 2017.
Netflix’s deals with Sandler came at a time when his movies weren’t faring as well in theaters, leading some to wonder why Netflix was striking these multi-year deals with the comedian. However, if these latest numbers are any indication, Sandler is still drawing huge audiences, at least on Netflix.
During its first quarter earnings call, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos also promised to release more such data in the near future saying, “Over the next several months, we are going to be rolling out more specific, granular reporting. First to our producers, and then to our members, and be more fully transparent about what people are watching on Netflix around the world.”
There you have it. Adam Sandler is here to stay and Netflix would be silly not to extend his contract beyond the eight movies he’s scheduled to do for them.