Under the Seine Will it be the movie hit of the summer? This French thriller made in Netflix, in which the French capital is attacked by a bloodthirsty shark, unleashes the passions of subscribers. A week after its premiere, on June 5, Xavier Gens’ feature film topped the ranking of the most viewed films worldwide on the platform.
With almost 71 million hours watched worldwide this week, Under the Seine It is the most watched non-English film in the world, far ahead of the Japanese one Godzilla minus one which occupies second place with 31 million hours watched.
But this disaster film directed by Bérénice Bejo and Nassim Lyes also far surpasses the ranking of English-language films, dominated by Hitman, published on June 7. This action feature film, starring the new favorite of American cinema, Glen Powell, leads English-language films with 21 million hours watched, 50 million less than Under the Seine.
Shared criticism
Besides, Under the Seine It ranks in the weekly Top 10 of the most watched films in 93 countries around the world, and ranks first in 76 of them. Among them France or Luxembourg, but also Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Lebanon, Morocco or Greece.
Manufactured between France, Spain and Belgium, Under the Seine benefits from a very important budget for a French film, a budget that is “impossible” to obtain for a theatrical release, as Xavier Gens told BFMTV at the beginning of June. “It is not a budget like Asterixbut we were able to be ambitious and have images that we have rarely seen in our cinema.
The film, however, is far from receiving critical praise. On the benchmark site Rotten Tomatoes, it only has 35% public approval. And the press is no more forgiving. Télérama ironically talks about “the recipe for an authentic French turnip stuffed with shark”, Les Echos describes “a turnip that reaches the bottom” and Le Parisien invites us to leave this “total waste of time” behind.
Strange phenomenon: murdered by French critics, Under the Seine He conquered the international press. The Americans at Variety praise “a movie about sharks worthy of being part of the sea teeth“, by Steven Spielberg, while the British newspaper Guardian praises it as “the best shark movie ever made.”
Towards a Sous la Seine 2?
For Screen Rant, this success is explained by a new algorithmic tactic by Netflix, recently exposed by the CEO to the New York Times: highlighting non-American films that find success in one country on the platforms of several others, to transform national films. successes in global successes.
And Xavier Gens does not close the door on the possibility of a second part. “For me, it is possible that there are other sharks in other major cities in the world,” he told Nice Matin. “We’ll see if that’s the case or not!”
Source: BFM TV
