Image: Warrior Nun, Netflix
It is a quiet week for the series that American audiences demand the most. There’s no change in the top five titles with Nickelodeon’s Spongebob Squarepants remaining the most in-demand series. The cartoon sponge attracted 108.2 times as much demand as the average series in the USA. Like last week, Spongebob Squarepants was followed by anime series My Hero Academia in second and Game Of Thrones in third.
The fifth most in-demand series remains Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender. The classic children’s animation has enjoyed a sustained surge in US audience demand since it was added to Netflix’s library in May. The renewed success of Avatar: The Last Airbender may have prompted Netflix to commission four more seasons of their own animated Avatar-like series, The Dragon Prince, as announced this week. This series is co-created by the head writer of Avatar, Aaron Ehasz. Netflix previously announced in 2018 that they were producing a live-action remake of Avatar: The Last Airbender, however it has been reported that this project has suffered from a COVID-19 related production delay.
NBC’s Saturday Night Live has the fastest growing audience demand in the overall top 10 this week, increased by 15.5% against the market average. This increase raises the show from rank 22nd to 10th. It comes after industry rumors this week that the broadcast mainstay will resume live filming for Season 46 in September, although likely without a live audience. If true this is good news for Saturday Night Live, as it means the often-political sketch comedy would be able to cover the run-up to November’s presidential election nearly as normal.
We see a similar situation at the top of this week’s digital original chart, with the three most demanded shows remaining the same as last week. While Disney+’s The Mandalorian and Star Wars: The Clone Wars exchange second and third place, Netflix’s Stranger Things is still the US’s top digital original series with 60.1 times the US average demand. Although still comfortably at the top, all three series have declined in demand from last week.
Netflix’s Warrior Nun is this week’s 10th most in-demand digital original series, although it lost 10.6% of last week’s audience demand relative to the market. The action series was released on July 2nd. Another Netflix July release may also reach the top ten next week: Cursed premiered on July 17th and is now ranked 14th after nearly quadrupling in demand from the week before.
The Witcher from Netflix is this week’s fastest growing of the ten most demanded digital original series. In this reasonably quiet week it only recorded a 3.2% market-relative increase from last week.
