If you live in the UK and are a Netflix subscriber, you can now enjoy a big new non-Original movie which was added to the platform on Sunday, December 8. This movie is Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which is on Prime Video in the US.
The sequel to 2011’s Puss in Boots, which was itself a spin-off to the four Shrek movies, The Last Wish tells the tale of the titular feline fencer as they hunt down a treasure which could restore their nine lives.
More so than most of the recent Shrek movies, Puss in Boots was a critical hit, enough so that it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature (though it lost to Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, also on Netflix). It was also a commercial hit and, anecdotally at least, people seemed to enjoy it a lot more than its 2011 predecessor.
With that in mind, it seems likely that Puss in Boots: The Last Wish could dominate Netflix’s Top 10 Films list… however, at the time of writing one day later, it hasn’t actually made it onto the ranking. Admittedly it’s only been a day, but we often see successful films hit the top spot in that time.
Why is that? Well, if you take a look at the movies that are in the Top 10 Films list (at the time of writing at least, though trust Netflix to update it as soon as this story goes live) you’ll see that it’s absolutely dominated by Christmas movies.
The top five are That Christmas, The Grinch (the animated one), Nativity, How The Grinch Stole Christmas (the Jim Carrey one) and Our Little Secret, with The Holiday and ‘Twas The Text Before Christmas also in the top ten at #7 and #8 respectively.
The three non-festive titles are sci-fi Subservience, horror Scream VI and thriller Dangerous, all of which are newly added, and all of which look like counter-programming for people who don’t want a Christmas movie.
It’s a similar story in the TV list with Black Doves (a spy thriller that Netflix is calling a Christmas show because it takes place in the holiday season) and A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter in the top two spots.
As Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is not a Christmas movie, it seems to have little hope of making its way into the top ten list any time soon. But perhaps as people finish with Netflix’s range of festive options, they’ll find time to watch it. After all, only one of the other entries on the list was given any kind of Oscar nods (How the Grinch Stole Christmas won Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and was nominated for two more). But maybe it’ll take until after Christmas for Puss in Boots to get onto the list, and that’s okay, because a cat is for life and not just for Christmas.