Oscar winner Jane Campion’s first feature film as director in 12 years, The Power of the Dog, had plenty to wag its tail about in its weekend debut on Netflix: Samba TV reports that the feature take of the Thomas Savage 1967 western novel drew 1.2M U.S. households.
That’s a great start for what is essentially a two-hour-and-six-minute arthouse title, higher than HBO Max’s first weekend of King Richard by 70% (707K U.S. Samba measured households), ahead 36% and 84% respectively from Netflix’s Ted Melfi dramedy Starling (883K U.S. households) and Rebecca Hall’s Passing (653K U.S. households) and even higher than the first weekend of HBO Max’s Sopranos prequel feature The Many Saints of Newark, which drew 1M stateside homes in its first three days. More interesting: The Power of the Dog is 300K U.S. households shy of the 5-day premiere figure for Disney+’s first episode of Hawkeye which drew 1.5M.
Granted, Netflix has a much bigger footprint than frosh streamers Disney+ and HBO Max in the U.S. and Canada; the Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos-run streamer counting an estimated 74M U.S. households. Samba TV measures 3M U.S. Smart TV households which tuned into a series or movie for five minutes.
The Power of the Dog follows Montana rancher brothers Phil and George Burbank during the early 20th century, the former fierce, and sharp and the other less instense, played respectively by Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons. George falls for and marries Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst) much to the upset of Phil, who also has it out for her son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). However, Phil finds himself exposed to the possibility of love.
The pic received a limited theatrical release that began on Nov. 17. Campion won Best Director at the Venice Film Festival for The Power of the Dog and the director also took home Best Director at the NY Film Critics Circle on Friday along with Cumberbatch being named Best Actor and Smit-McPhee getting Best Supporting Actor.
The Power of the Dog also pulled in 92k UK households, 37k German households, and 16k Australian households over its first weekend. Samba says the U.S. audience skewed female (+9%) and slightly white (+3%). Of the top 25 largest DMAs, Portland, OR over-indexed the most (+79%), followed by Minneapolis, MN (+66%) and Boston, MA (+35%). Of the UK regions, Scotland over-indexed the most (+30%), followed by Northern Ireland (+28%).
Netflix recently reports the weekly views of its top movies and series in hours for the previous week. Those figures get released tomorrow.
