Doing Life opens soft for a Perry Netflix title
Tyler Perry’s latest Netflix film, Doing Life, entered the global top 10 with 9.3 million views for the week of September 28 to October 4. On Netflix’s 2026 film slate, that puts it above Roommates but below Remarkably Bright Creatures.
The number is not bad in isolation. Against Perry’s own Netflix output, though, it is one of only two of his films to debut below 10 million views. For a creator Netflix has backed for consistent volume, that is a meaningful miss.
The Gentlemen shows a sequel halo
While Doing Life underwhelmed, The Gentlemen kept compounding. Season 2 stayed in the top 10, and Season 1 is still charting five weeks after its release. A new season pulling a prior season back into the rankings is not unusual; this length of co-existence is.
That is a catalog flywheel: a returning season reactivates earlier episodes at near-zero additional spend. For streamers, it is why library depth still matters even in a new-release arms race.
Other lines from the top 10
- LEGO One Piece cracked the top 10 with only a two-episode run. It opened ahead of Stranger Things: Tales from ’85, which drew 2.8M views in its first four days, though the different launch days make that comparison loose.
- The Lizzie Borden Story is tracking behind earlier Monster seasons in week 3, a signal the franchise may need a reset.
- The Widower – Til Death Do Us Part had a strong true-crime debut, landing in the genre’s second tier rather than the very top.
- Not A Stranger from Netflix Turkey held well in week 3 and remains the region’s best performer to date.
What the misses signal
A cluster of international titles failed to chart, including The Ramparts of Ice, Ranma 1/2, Blue Box, Outside, Medusa Season 2 and The Arena. What’s on Netflix’s newsletter put it bluntly: “I can’t recall another week where so many new Netflix titles slipped through the net.”
For platform buyers and media planners, the signal is discoverability, not demand. Too many launches in one window can split the first-week audience and depress each title’s top-10 case. A debut number, especially for a non-English or anime title, needs to be read against launch density.
How to read the week
The actionable takeaway is to benchmark a new title against the creator’s own history and the slate around it, not against a platform average. A 9.3M opening is only a miss if you know Perry’s baseline. Likewise, a show holding in week 3 matters more than a show that spikes and exits.
Source: What’s on Netflix
