At least, it’s big according to Netflix.
Joan E. Solsman
Senior reporter
Joan E. Solsman is CNET’s senior media reporter, covering the intersection of entertainment and technology. She’s reported from locations spanning Disneyland to Serbian refugee camps, and she previously wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal. She bikes to get almost everywhere and has been doored only once.
All of Us Are Dead racked up the most viewing on Netflix in a single week since global phenom Squid Game.
Netflix‘s Korean zombie series All of Us Are Dead isn’t quite a Squid Game caliber phenomenon, but the show was still the most popular thing on Netflix in a single week since Squid Game — at least, according to Netflix.
All of Us Are Dead has been watched for 361 million total hours since its release on Jan. 28 through Sunday. That’s enough viewing to make it Netflix’s No. 5 most-popular non-English language show ever, and it still has two more weeks to rack up watch time for the rankings. (Full Netflix all-time rankings are below.)
Just looking at its second week of release ending Sunday, All of Us Are Dead was watched for 236.2 million hours, and its popularity spread beyond Asian markets, where it was initially popular, to Western Europe and English-speaking countries.
By comparison, Squid Game — Netflix’s most-watched show so far — was pulling in 448.7 million hours of viewing during its second week of release. Still, besides Squid Game, no other series on Netflix has come close to All of Us Are Dead’s 236.2 million hours watched in a single week since late June, the earliest Netflix started supplying this data.
In mid-November, Netflix launched a website posting weekly charts of its most popular shows and movies, as well as a global ranking of all-time most watched titles. The charts are updated every week and ranked by the total number of hours that subscribers spent watching them.
The rankings represent an unprecedented trove of data about what’s popular on Netflix, detailing the most popular titles in the last week not only globally but also for more than 90 individual countries. It is, by far, the most transparency that Netflix has ever adopted for its viewership. It will also help subscribers like you have a better grip on what’s most popular on the world’s biggest subscription streaming service.
For years, Netflix was notoriously tight-lipped about its viewership. Beau Willimon — creator of House of Cards, which put Netflix’s original programming on the map — once said the company wouldn’t even share viewership metrics with him.
But within the last two years, Netflix has become much more open about the popularity of its shows and movies to help it recruit talent and stoke buzz. First, Netflix added a top-trending ranking to its service, so people can see the most popular titles streaming on Netflix in their country on any given day. Then it also started publicly sharing popularity stats for certain titles, publicizing the number of accounts that watched two minutes of a particular title in its first month of release.
The company updates its weekly “Top 10 on Netflix” every Tuesday, based on hours viewed from Monday to Sunday the previous week for both original and licensed titles. The rankings are broken down into top-10 charts for films in English, TV in English, films in non-English languages and TV in non-English languages. In addition to global charts, Netflix will provide rankings for more than 90 countries.
A ranking of all-time most watched titles also lives on the site, detailing shows that have the most viewing hours in their first 28 days of release. It’s also updated every Tuesday, whenever any programs make it into the charts during the week prior.
The following are Netflix’s most watched series, based on Netflix’s own reporting of total hours viewed in the first 28 days of each titles’ release. Any changes from the previous week are in bold text.
Additional high-ranking shows on Netflix have included:
The following are Netflix’s most watched movies, based on Netflix’s own reporting of total hours viewed in the first 28 days of each titles’ release. Any changes from the previous week are in bold text.
Former top-ranking movies that have been bumped out of Netflix’s official all-time charts:
Netflix appears to have never released a non-English-language film that generated enough viewing hours to make it into an overall top-watched ranking. But additional widely watched non-English language movies on Netflix have included:
Up until November, Netflix reported popularity of certain titles using a completely different metric. Netflix used to report popularity by the total number of accounts that watched a show or movie for at least two minutes during the first 28 days of release.
However, these earlier audience stats long exasperated parts of the TV industry for being unverified, unsupported and disclosed without much accountability.
One big complaint was Netflix’s old yardstick for measuring popularity. The two-minute metric isn’t used by any other competitors, and it can overstate the popularity of a title that people barely sample. The two-minute threshold means some titles are counted as being “watched” before the viewer even arrives at the main title sequence.
In October, Netflix said it would toss out its controversial two-minute metric in favor of its new hours-watched standard — counting how many total hours a show or movie was watched during its first 28 days of release. November’s launch of the new rankings site made good on that plan.
Netflix also also brought on EY — formerly known as Ernst & Young, one of the world’s biggest accounting companies — as an independent third party to vouch for the numbers. Netflix will publish EY’s report next year. (Netflix has also switched the daily Top 10 rows on its service itself to show the programs that are being watched most based on total hours viewed, rather than the old two-minute metric that was used to tabulate them before.)
“Figuring out how best to measure success in streaming is hard, and there’s no one perfect metric,” Pablo Perez de Rosso, Netflix’s vice president of content strategy, planning and analysis, said in a blog post announcing the rankings site. “Having looked at the different options, we believe engagement as measured by hours viewed is a strong indicator of a title’s popularity, as well as overall member satisfaction, which is important for retention in subscription services.”
The following are Netflix’s most sampled TV series by number of accounts that have watched at least two minutes in the first 28 days of release. Any figures that were projections when Netflix announced them are noted, and this ranking includes only the shows that Netflix has chosen to disclose. Other Netflix titles certainly have accrued enough sampling in the first month of release to make it on this list, but Netflix can cherry-pick which titles get viewership disclosures.
This list is no longer being updated, since Netflix has switched to reporting hours watched in November.
The following are Netflix’s most sampled films by the number of accounts that have watched at least two minutes in the first 28 days of release. Any figures that were projections when Netflix announced them are noted, and this ranking includes only the films that Netflix has chosen to disclose. Other Netflix titles certainly have accrued enough sampling in the first month of release to make it on this list, but Netflix can cherry-pick which titles get viewership disclosures.
This list is no longer being updated, since Netflix has switched to reporting hours watched in November.
Titles that are the most sampled, as mentioned before, are ranked by how many accounts watched at least two minutes of them in the first 28 days of release. Titles that are the most watched are shows and movies with the greatest total accumulated viewing hours in their first 28 days of release.
The introduction of the hour-watched data provided new context around Netflix’s earlier popularity figures, allowing comparisons between programming that racked up a lot of watch-time versus programming that was widely sampled (or, in some cases, both.)
Hours-watched can reveal programming that inspires the most loyalty. Three programs show up in the hours-watched Top 10 list twice, even though none make repeat appearances in the Top 10 most sampled: retro sci-fi series Stranger Things; Money Heist, a Spanish-language series also known as La Casa de Papel; and 13 Reasons Why, a teen series that’s been criticized for its depiction of suicide. Each have two seasons that made it onto the Top 10 most watched list. Their repeat appearances in the rankings reflect how hours-watched can be a better gauge of the enduring appeal of particular titles.
Hours-watched also can reveal the strength of some shows that were either released before Netflix began sharing viewership stats, or were released so long ago that Netflix simply had millions fewer accounts that could sample them. As of September, the third season of Stranger Things, for example, was Netflix’s No. 8 most popular show by number of accounts sampling it. But by hours watched, the same season moves up to No. 4 — and its second season, which came out when Netflix had 100 million fewer subscribers, is its No. 11 top show by hours watched.
The hours-watched metric also comes with a caveat to keep it mind: It favors movies and TV seasons that have longer runtimes, so long as people stick with them. At three-and-a-half-hours long, The Irishman suddenly appears up high in Netflix’s film Top 10 list of movies by hours watched, even though it falls far short of a Top 10 ranking if you count how many accounts sampled it.
Prior to 2020, Netflix counted views differently. Netflix would count something as “watched” when you got through 70% of it, either of the first episode for a series or of a film’s total runtime, within the first 28 days of release. Netflix says the new two-minute threshold is more fair to all titles, regardless of their length. But it also means the newer stats inflated viewership numbers by about one-third compared with the old ones.
These are previous viewership stats under the 70% rule, for reference.
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