Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston’s Murder Mystery, Beyonce’s historic Homecoming, Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and Disney’s The Incredibles 2 rank among the most popular Netflix movies of 2019.
The streaming giant, Netflix, recently released a master list of its most-favoured content, as well as individual rankings of films, original series, unscripted shows and comedy specials that include Murder Mystery, which stars Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston in key roles; Martin Scorsese’s directorial The Irishman and Beyonce’s Homecoming among others.
“Following Murder Mystery as the year’s most popular film were titles including Michael Bay’s critically panned 6 Underground, The Incredibles 2, Ben Affleck’s Triple Frontier, and Sony Animation’s Oscar winner Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” reported Variety.
Though the viewership numbers were not revealed, in June the streaming site tweeted that Murder Mystery had Netflix’s biggest opening weekend ever, with over 30 million accounts watching it around the world. A Netflix spokesperson revealed that “for the 2019 lists, ‘popularity’ was not determined by the total number of viewers for a given piece of content and the lists were generated by counting the total number of households to stream an individual title for at least two minutes, during the first 28 days of its release.”
As for the films that debuted less than 28 days ago, Netflix used a projection model to determine where final viewership numbers are likely to land; for instance Bay’s Ryan Reynolds action film, 6 Underground, which premiered on December 13, 2019, became the second most popular film release of 2019. It is ranked third on an overall list that includes series like Stranger Things, according to the streamer.
Apart from Murder Mystery and 6 Underground, the most popular movie releases of 2019 include The Incredibles 2, which ranks on number three, while The Irishman and Triple Frontier bagged the fourth and fifth spot respectively. The list also features Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile; The Highwaymen; Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse; Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 and Secret Obsession.
As far as the documentary title is concerned, Joe Berlinger’s Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes topped the list. On its heels was the visual feast Our Planet, FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened and the Coachella festival masterpiece Homecoming: A Film by Beyonce.
“Movies are notably dominant on the overall list, considering Netflix is a service built on binge-able episodic content,” noted Variety. “If Netflix’s popularity metrics are to be taken at face value, it would also justify some risky financial bets taken by the film group, led by Scott Stuber. Netflix acquired Triple Frontier for a reported $90 million after the film’s distribution deal fell through at Paramount, and faced wide criticism and doubt for overspending. Similarly, the scripted Ted Bundy story Extremely Wicked, starring Zac Efron and also from Berlinger, received a mixed 56 per cent score from Rotten Tomatoes but left this year’s Sundance Film Festival a $9 million check from Netflix following a bidding war.”
If the list has any forecasting power, it might be that Netflix needs to up its feature animation game. The Incredibles 2 and Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2, both franchises belong to from Disney, brought them eyeballs in 2019.
– With information from Variety
