‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ Shoots Up Streaming Top 10 | Chart
If streaming has proven anything, it’s that even the reboots nobody asked for can be massively popular, provided they find the right audience.
Such is the case with Amazon Prime Video and New Regency’s “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” which debuts in fourth place on the streaming chart in the Samba TV Weekly Wrap Report for the week of Feb. 5 to 11. The action-romance series stars Donald Glover and Maya Erskine as two secret agents undercover for a mysterious organization, inspired by both the 1996 CBS series and the 2005 film starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
While the film version was a box office success, nearly 20 years later, the movie is best remembered more for giving the world “Brangelina” than it is for its plot, storylines or fan base. However, in casting two actors of color as the leads in this latest TV version, Amazon found an audience eager to tune in: 640,000 households watched the show over its premiere weekend, with Black households over-indexing by 52%. This clearly proves, once again, that representation matters in casting on TV.
The rest of the streaming chart makes something of a Netflix sandwich this week, with the streamer owning the top and bottom of the chart. “Griselda,” a crime drama series, holds the top spot. That’s followed by “The Tourist,” an Australian thriller series that debuted in its home country back in 2022 but was just recently added to Netflix in the U.S. Third is “American Assassin,” a 2017 box office flop starring Michael Keaton, which is getting a second life on streaming.
On the linear side, the Super Bowl was obviously the week’s big story. Samba TV, the first in the market to issue data again this year, saw the highest viewership for the Big Game than in the last several years.
In fact, 39.0 million U.S. households watched the Chiefs face off against the 49ers, a 6% increase in viewership year-over-year. This year’s halftime show starring Usher was also a big hit, with 30.1 million U.S. households watching the set, up 5% year-over-year. The Samba TV Weekly Wrap Report omits sports programming, so we will return to you next week with the latest linear programming.
Cole Strain is VP and Head of R&D at Samba TV, a WrapPRO partner. Click here for more data and analysis from Samba TV.
The Wrap Report provides an exclusive first look at the most watched movies and TV series from the past week across both streaming and linear television sourced from viewership trends collected from Samba TV’s panel of more than 3 million households drawn from over 25 million connected TVs, balanced to the U.S. Census
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