‘The Ridiculous Six’ Is Already Netflix’s Most-Streamed Movie in Its First 30 Days

Industry observers understand that Netflix is immensely successful, though they have only divined that notion from feelings, smells in the air, and general cultural presence. The specific extent to which Netflix runs the marketplace remains unclear, because Netflix has never publicized any figures like subscription quantities, number of individual streams on any given video, or even general finance reports.

Netflix’s head of content acquisition Ted Sarandos has remained defiantly tight-lipped about the streaming giant’s concrete statistics, for no real reason other than that he can. Without any overseeing presence to monitor their movement as the Nielsen ratings do for TV, Netflix executives can say or do whatever they want. Which is a roundabout way of saying that when Netflix claims that Adam Sandler’s new Western-‘comedy’ The Ridiculous Six has become the platform’s most-streamed movie in its first 30 days on the site, we have no real choice other than to believe them.

That was the shocking revelation announced during Netflix’s keynote at tech conference CES just yesterday, where Variety reports that Sarandos spoke about the company’s past, present, and future along with CEO Reed Hastings. It was during this speech that Sarandos dropped the A-bomb, A standing for Adam (or perhaps Awful or Abject), asserting that The Ridiculous Six has racked up more views since its release last month than any other film on Netflix has within its initial 30-day period. He added that the Sandler vehicle has also shot to #1 in every single territory with access to Netflix, and has retained that #1 spot in many countries. If this is true — and it’s really really hard to believe that it is but whatever you say, Netflix — the four-picture deal they signed with Sandler is starting to look pretty smart.

The temptation to dismiss The Ridiculous Six out of hand is strong, mostly because the film in question is long, unfunny, peppily offensive, and generally horrible. But the Sandman, as fate would have it, is bigger than all of us.