Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | News | July 31, 2025
On the week of its release, Happy Gilmore 2 instantly broke the record for the most-watched Netflix movie ever over its first weekend, racking up 46.7 million views and surpassing the all-time opening weekend record held by… Adam Sandler. The last time Netflix set a debut-weekend record was in 2019, with 30.9 million views for Sandler and Jennifer Aniston’s Murder Mystery.
The Sandler-Netflix deal is clearly working—for Netflix, at least—even if the movies themselves aren’t exactly prestige fare. In fact, one of my children (I will not say which) recently informed me that they watched Grown Ups on Netflix and laughed. If you’re wondering what my worst nightmare looks like, there it is. I’ve spent years forbidding my kids from watching shows like Young Sheldon (we all have our lines in the sand!), but it never occurred to me to ban Adam Sandler movies. This one’s on me.
It wasn’t a record-breaker, but Eric Bana’s Untamed pulled in 26 million views in its first week for Netflix, a number impressive enough that the limited series has already been picked up for a second season and converted into a regular series. Netflix is crushing summer right now, with strong performances not just from Untamed but also from Amy Bradley’s Missing and The Hunting Wives.
Meanwhile, last week’s episode of South Park delivered monster numbers for Comedy Central and Paramount, racking up 5.9 million views in its first three days. That’s the show’s best linear performance since 1999, back when people still watched linear TV. Unsurprisingly, it also beat everything else on cable last Wednesday. Given what we now know, the next episode—reportedly targeting ICE—could be even bigger.
For what it’s worth, Colbert’s The Late Show also had a huge week in the wake of its cancellation, capturing 12.69 percent of all viewers—the best weekly share the show has ever posted under Stephen Colbert. Average viewership rose to over 3 million, more than Kimmel and Fallon combined. In the 18-49 demo, it even managed to beat The Daily Show, which itself had its best 18-49 performance in years with Josh Johnson as host.
As a side note, this from the Financial Times yesterday about CBS News under incoming CEO David Ellison:
“The news lost its way — it became extreme, elitist, and performative,” said a person close to Ellison. “People like Colbert and others act like they’re the IP, the value, when it’s the brand and journalism that matter. We need to get back to fundamentals. That’s what David and his team believe.”
Hey dipsh*t: Colbert isn’t the news, nor is he a journalist. He’s a talk-show host. The fact that Ellison doesn’t know the difference is part of the flipping problem.
