Netflix has released details of its most popular titles of 2019 with Murder Mystery topping the list overall. Murder Mystery is one of Netflix’s own movies and sees Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston try to solve a whodunit-style murder mystery while on vacation.
Netflix hasn’t revealed hard numbers and so it remains to be seen just how many people watched Murder Mystery, although with more than 60 million subscribers in the U.S. alone, it is clear the company’s own content has proved popular this year. In fact, even when taking Murder Mystery out of the equation, the majority of the top 10 lists were still stocked with the streaming service’s own shows and movies. For example, The Witcher ranked second overall in 2019 for serial-based shows. This is in spite of The Witcher only becoming available to watch in late December.
All of this will be good news for the subscription service as 2019 has seen a change in the way content is being consumed. Throughout this year, many companies have prepared to launch their own direct-to-consumer streaming services. Due to this, many studios and networks have looked to remove access to their movies and shows on third-party streaming services in a bid to add an extra layer of exclusivity and appeal to their own services. In turn, this has led to services, including Netflix, becoming more reliant on their own original shows to bolster out premium content.
While this trend of keeping shows and movies for their own streaming services is expected to continue in 2020 and beyond, this latest data would suggest Netflix is unlikely to feel the impact of departing shows and movies too much. If anything, people appear to be very happy with the lineup Netflix has put out this year and that’s likely to be of relief to the company.
Here’s the trailer for Netflix’s most popular title in 2019, Murder Mystery:
A closer look at the Netflix 2019 rankings
With the lack of firm viewer data it is difficult to draw any parallels on the popularity of these shows and movies compared to other services. What’s more, the data is based on how Netflix determines a watch with the counts tallied based on how many people watched a minimum of two minutes of a title during the opening 28-days of release.
Based on these factors, these lists are more representative of titles that subscribers appeared interested in, more so than ones they actually watched. In the case of the newest titles, including The Witcher, the figures are even less reliable as the ranking is determined on what Netflix expects to be the case by the end of the 28-day release window – following the actual number of 2-minute or more views so far.
This data is also specific to the U.S. with the streaming service having released viewer habit lists separately for different countries.
Here’s what U.S. Netflix subscribers watched most in 2019 overall:
- Murder Mystery
- Stranger Things season 3
- 6 Underground
- The Incredibles 2
- The Irishman
- The Witcher
- Triple Frontier
- Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
- The Umbrella Academy
- The Highwaymen
The top 10 most popular movies on Netflix in 2019:
- Murder Mystery
- 6 Underground
- The Incredibles 2
- The Irishman
- Triple Frontier
- Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
- The Highwaymen
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
- Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2
- Secret Obsession
The top 10 most popular series on Netflix in 2019:
- Stranger Things series 3
- The Witcher
- The Umbrella Academy
- Dead to Me
- You season 2
- When They See Us limited series
- Unbelievable limited series
- Sex Education
- 13 Reasons Why season 3
- Raising Dion
Source: Netflix via Twitter
