Stranger Things, which was renewed for a fourth season a few weeks ago, continues to prove why it’s Netflix’s most reliable original series. The streamer has announced that the series had set a new viewing record for the platform.
Season three of Stranger Things is Netflix’s most-watched original series ever, according to its quarterly earnings report. The sci-fi drama pulled in more than 64 million views in the four weeks after its July 4 premiere. This surpasses the numbers of any of the shows for which the streamer has released similar figures in past earnings reports.
Since Netflix started highlighting select worldwide view numbers in its fourth-quarter 2018 earnings, the previous high for a series was 45 million over four weeks for The Umbrella Academy. The numbers for Stranger Things really aren’t a surprise considering the early figures that were released soon after season 3 premiered. Less than a week after season three’s release in July, Netflix said 40.7 million member accounts worldwide had viewed the show, the fastest a Netflix original had ever amassed such a big audience. More than 18 million member households had already finished the eight-episode season within a few days.
Among the other programming Netflix highlighted in its quarterly letter to shareholders: The critically acclaimed limited series Unbelievable has been viewed by 32 million member accounts in its first four weeks, and season three of La Casa de Papel (aka Money Heist) was the most-watched show in non-English language territories with 44 million households viewing. On the feature film side, Netflix said the family film Tall Girl was viewed by 41 million member accounts in its first four weeks; the thriller Secret Obsession, starring Brenda Song, racked up 40 million views in 28 days; and Otherhood, starring Angela Bassett, Patricia Arquette, and Felicity Huffman, drew 29 million worldwide views in its first four weeks.
If you’re wondering how the streamer determines their numbers in the end, Netflix counts a “view” as a member household watching 70 percent of one episode of a series or 70 percent of a feature film.
