Netflix Says Bridgerton Is Fifth-Largest Season Premiere for an Original Series

Lady Whistledown has her headline for tomorrow. If televisions and iPads existed during the Regency, that is.

Netflix tweeted on Monday evening that Bridgerton — its adaptation of Julia Quinn’s best-selling novels, which was created for TV by Chris Van Dusen and executive-produced by Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland — is projected to be sampled by more than 63 million households* in its first four weeks of release. If true, that would make the sumptuous and rrrribald! period drama Netflix’s fifth-biggest* original series to date (behind The Witcher Season 1, Stranger Things Season 3, Money Heist Part 4 and Tiger King).

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Couple that tally with the 44 million households that are projected to sample Robert Rodriguez’s We Can Be Heroes movie (which just got a sequel order), and Netflix claims (without independent verification, it must be noted) its “biggest viewing week between Christmas and New Year’s ever.”

*The numbers that Netflix reports are based on subscribers who have watched at least two minutes of a piece of content.

The unarguable critical success and pop-culture buzzworthiness of Bridgerton, which debuted eight episodes on Christmas Day, comes on the heels of Netflix declaring a decisive checkmate with its highly acclaimed Thanksgiving release, The Queen’s Gambit, which was sampled by 62 million households in its first 28 days — making it the streaming giant’s “biggest scripted limited series to date.”

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