Netflix Gets Scary Good Results With Fear Street’s Weekly Releases

Netflix’s teen slasher trilogy Fear Street is terrifying—and the unusual way the horror films have been released on the streamer is helping them get scary good numbers. Since the first film in the three-part movie event was released on July 2, the installments have been fixtures on Netflix’s Top 10 lists, which it releases daily on its platform. Fear Street Part One: 1994 hovered in the top three most-popular titles on the service for a week following its release, at which point Fear Street Part Two: 1978 climbed to the top of the charts. On Thursday, the day before the release of Fear Street Part Three: 1666, Fear Street Part One and Fear Street Part Two were the third and second-most popular movies, respectively, on Netflix in the U.S. The success of the first two titles on Netflix is proof that the streamer’s bet on an unusual release strategy is paying off. The service has never attempted to release films in a weekly cadence before, and it’s an unusual format for a film series to take—it’s much more normal for a studio to take years between releasing movie sequels and spin-offs. But the move to release Fear Street in the way Netflix did indicates the service’s increasing willingness to deviate from its long-running strategy of dumping batches of programming onto the service all at once to encourage its subscribers to binge-watch. Netflix has occasionally experimented with releasing some of its unscripted programming in smaller weekly batches, especially for its reality and competition series. That’s been driven by a desire to give fans time to dissect episodes and discuss developments instead of plowing through the entire season in one night. But Netflix executives have also said that most content performs better and has a bigger cultural impact when it drops all at once. In the case of Fear Street, executives balanced the release cadence carefully. In an interview with the New York Times, Netflix vice president of independent film and documentary features Lisa Nishimura said the weekly cadence was a “sweet spot” that allowed each of the films to stand on its own. A person close to the decision-making at Netflix told Adweek that the weekly release also helps preserve a sense of excitement and mystery for viewers—there’s no chance at being spoiled on the third film if there’s time to watch each movie, albeit with a sense of urgency. Plus, there’s enough time for discussions and watch parties, which help build anticipation between each release. The unusual roll-out for the Fear Street trilogy was baked into the films themselves from the beginning. The trilogy, which is adapted from the R.L. Stine young adult horror novels of the same name, feature a closely connected story best experienced by following along in relatively quick succession. “We ended up coming up with this idea that’s a hybrid of traditional television content and movies by connecting the stories, yet hopefully finishing each of the stories and making you feel it’s fully complete,” director Leigh Janiak said in a recent interview with Deadline. The three films were shot all at once, using many of the same cast members, with the thought that they would be released theatrically every month for three months. When Netflix acquired the franchise in August 2020, company executives knew they had to do something special, especially during conversations with the film’s creative team, a Netflix source said. Netflix has been planning the weekly back-to-back-to-back release of the three films since May, when it released a trailer for the three-part movie marathon. The release plan was even part of the marketing for the films: “Three Movies. Three Weeks. One Killer Story,” was the tagline for the trilogy in marketing materials. And while there are no immediate plans in the works for the streamer to do a similar experiment—the service takes a case-by-case approach—the success of Fear Street so far means that Netflix viewers just might see it again. What Netflix’s Top 10 Lists Say About Streaming Viewership