‘Monsters: The Lyle & Erik Menendez Story’ Tops Nielsen Streaming Chart As ‘Gilmore Girls’ Makes Seasonal Return

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story shot onto Nielsen’s weekly streaming charts after its recent launch on Netflix and was joined by the return of Gilmore Girls, which has a habit of entering the zeitgeist as fall starts.

The second installment of Ryan Murphy’s Monsters franchise generated 1.7B viewing minutes for its nine episodes after its launch on September 19. This put it ahead of The Perfect Couple in number two with 1B minutes as the Nicole Kidman-fronted drama series hit the billion-mark for its third consecutive week during the week September 16 – September 22, 2024.

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However, while it was evidently a big hit for the streamer, it couldn’t match its predecessor’s numbers as the Jeffrey Dahmer story cleared 3.6B minutes in its opening week in 2022. Two small caveats are that the Mendendez story had one fewer episode than the Dahmer series and launched on a Wednesday, rather than a Thursday, giving it an extra day to capture viewers, although this would not have likely closed the gap too much.

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power moved up a couple of spots – from five to three – thanks to the release of its sixth episode, which drew over 800M minutes of viewing.

In terms of originals, Paramount+’s Tulsa King was mobbed with 444M viewing minutes for its second season and Disney+’s Agatha All Along cooked up 426M minutes.

The most surprising entry, however, was Gilmore Girls in at number eight on the overall list with 640M minutes watched over the week. Nielseon said that the show normally starts to see more viewers after Labor Day as audiences head to Stars Hollow, Connecticut and its 153 episodes. Some 56% of its audience is also in the 18-34 demo.

Rebel Ridge, which was number two in the overall list last week but fell to number nine with 608M minutes watched. It did, however, top the film list, followed by Uglies with 607M minutes.

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