The Carry-On by Jaume Collet-Serra with Taron Egerton holds up so well that it is likely to be one of Netflix’s most viewed films.
Ethan Kopek is a TSA agent who is asked to smuggle a suitcase. If he fails to do so, the repercussions could be devastating. Here is the pitch of Carry-On, broadcast on Netflix since December 13, 2024. A significant detail: the film begins on Christmas Eve. Indeed, it is the big end-of-year entertainment, strategic as the period is good for the streaming service. The English top 10 includes 5 released in December: Bird Box in 2018, We are the heroes in 2020, Don’t Look Up in 2021, At Knives Out 2 in 2022 and The World After Us in 2023.
Director Jaume Collet-Serra has been a regular at mainstream shows for several years (Non-stop, Jungle Cruise, Black Adam), the operation promised to be juicy. And indeed she was. And more than two weeks after the launch, we realize just how much.
Carry-on, the end-of-year hit?
The film had already enjoyed a great start with 42 million views after barely three days of broadcast, a little more than The World After Us5th in the general ranking of English-speaking films on the platform. To compete with it, it had to hold out over the long haul, and that’s exactly what happened: according to Netflix statistics detailed by The Hollywood Reporterfrom December 22, i.e. after 10 days, it would have reached 97.1 million views.
Of course, Carry-on is still first in the weekly ranking of English-speaking films in the world and in 88 countries (including France)! Over the last week, it would therefore have been seen 55 million timescompared to 44.9 million times for The World After Us.
And given the competition in this niche (consisting mainly of discreet Messengers of war), he risks monopolizing the top 10 for a long time to come. As for other SvoD services, Red Onepresented as a huge box by Amazon (without specifying its accounting method, when Netflix divides the number of hours by the duration of the program), did not overshadow it either. To see if the launch of season 2 of Squid Gamethe other big event of the end of the year on Netflix, will slow it down.
But at this point, it’s almost already guaranteed to have a place in the world’s top 10 English-language feature films. To make its rankings, the service takes into account the first 91 days of broadcast. However, the first film on the list, Glass Onion: a Knives Out story accumulates 136.3 million views. If he were non-English speaking, he would already be in 4th position, just behind The Snow Circle and its 98.5 million views! We might as well point out that he has plenty of time to carve out a good place for himself in this streaming pantheon.
It goes without saying that at this stage of distribution, it is by far the biggest hit for a Originals Netflix in 2024, ahead The Lady and the Dragon, The Union, And a square full or even Le Flic de Beverly Hills : Axel F. Usually, the third week involves a fairly significant drop, but that will not prevent the film led by Taron Egerton from rising among the great successes of the platform. Until next year?
