Being dubbed anyone’s answer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a surefire way to set oneself up for disappointment, especially if, on the surface, you don’t seem to shoot for a target audience beyond middle schoolers. Nevertheless, the dedicated fanbase of the lovingly crafted Ladybug & Cat Noir franchise has always kept the demand nice and healthy, and with the Ladybug & Cat Noir: The Movie capitalizing on its box office run by soaring on Netflix’s charts, there could be plenty more in store for the Parisian superheroes yet.
After boasting a relatively impressive box office pull of $10 million — with nearly 90% of those ticket sales coming from the franchise’s native France — the next stop on Ladybug & Cat Noir: The Movie‘s road to success was to make a name for itself on the streaming charts, and with the film’s debut as the second-most watched Netflix feature, with over 20 million hours viewed from 12.2 million unique views, that mission just may have been accomplished.
The flick finished second behind the Jackie Chan and John Cena-led Hidden Strike, which boasts nearly 38 million hours viewed from 22 million unique views; a comfortable lead on the superhero film, but one plagued by a 17% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
It’s not quite doing the numbers that Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio or The Sea Beast managed to put up, but considering Netflix seems all but ready to expand Ladybug & Cat Noir — a franchise that already consists of comic books, novels, and a 130-episode-and-counting mainline television series — even further, a Top 10 debut of this caliber for the franchise’s first foray into feature films could mean that it won’t be its last foray, either.