The expensive deal with producer Shonda Rhimes seems to be worth it for Netflix: the new season of “Bridgerton” started like no other English-language series before and only season 5 of the Spanish series “Money Heist” started even better.
In a sensational deal worth several hundred million dollars, series creator Shonda Rhimes and her company have committed to producing exclusively for Netflix in the future. It was a loss for Disney’s ABC, where Rhimes and her team created, among other things, the long-running hit Grey’s Anatomy. And as the evidence continues, Netflix has landed a good deal.
Record – with a small caveat
According to the statistics on streamed hours published by Netflix and thus visible to everyone the second season of the costume series “Bridgerton” has accumulated 193 million hours in just three days. No English-language series got off to a better start on Netflix. The Spanish super hit “Money Heist” comes with the first episodes of the final fifth season to 201.9 million hours in the first three days.
The Netflix statistics can be viewed back to June 2021. According to this, the second season of “Bridgerton” lands in second place overall in the series, ahead of season 2 of the fantasy series “The Witcher” (142.4 million hours in the first three days). That’s a really strong figure for the new “Bridgerton” episodes and another hit from the house of Shonda Rhimes, after another just succeeded with “Inventing Anna”.
Resilience is to be expected
The first three days are not immediately critical to the overall success of a series. The top-grossing Netflix show of all time, “Squid Game” only clocked in 63.1 million hours at launch, but exploded in the weeks that followed and was a long-running, global phenomenon.
But since the first season “Bridgerton” is the second most successful Netflix season ever after “Squid Game”, Shonda Rhimes and her team should sleep peacefully in anticipation of further numbers. Meanwhile, work on the wider “Bridgerton” future has long since begun.
“Bridgerton” without end
The main series will have (at least) four seasons. But that’s not all. In addition, a prequel series about Queen Charlotte’s (Golda Rosheuvel) past is in development. The Queen wants to dictate the tastes of London’s upper class, but how did she get into this position in the first place? Young Violet Bridgerton and Lady Danbury are also set to star in this spin-off, which doesn’t have to be the only addition to this Netflix hit.
