During Netflix’s earnings call on Tuesday, October 18, the streamer’s co-CEO and chief content officer Ted Sarandos told analysts he has no misgivings about the company’s staggering $17 billion content budget for 2022. “I think we’re spending at about the right level,” he said. “And as we reaccelerate revenue, we’ll revisit that number, of course. But we’re a pretty disciplined bunch about that.” A big chunk of that content spend, of course, goes to fund original Netflix movies like Luckiest Girl Alive and Mr. Harrigan’s Phone — two of the biggest film titles that are dominating the streamer this week.
Netflix Top 10 movies
Also on Tuesday, Netflix released updated Top 10 chart data reflecting its most-watched TV shows and movies around the world, as it does each week. The charts amount to the equivalent of a kind of Netflix box office, offering an empirical albeit imperfect snapshot of what’s hot on the service at a given moment in time across its global user base.
The content budget that Sarandos referred to, ideally, funds a virtuous cycle at the streaming giant: More money spent leads to more (and, ideally, better) content like the movies below, which brings in more subscriber revenue, giving Netflix more money to spend — and so on, and so on. And one way to gauge the effectiveness of that pattern is by perusing the Top 10 chart data, which details global viewing data around Netflix movies and TV shows by noting the amount of viewing time each title has accrued on a weekly basis.
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This chart data, it should go without saying, also isn’t meant as a reflection of quality. Indeed, the Netflix movies you see below on this week’s list quite often don’t perform highly on sites like Rotten Tomatoes, despite the significant viewing time the titles have managed to accrue.
THE LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE is a great film. It’s now the only white-woman centered narrative film about sexual assault that I approve of.
Huge TW, but it’s GOOD and extremely nuanced, especially regarding complex trauma and the idea that survivors want revenge.
— Kyra Jones (@BlkAssFeminist) October 18, 2022
Netflix “box office” for October 10-16
All that said, here are the Top 10 most-watched Netflix movies globally right now, according to the streamer’s updated figures covering the 7-day period that ended on October 16.
- Luckiest Girl Alive — 57 million hours viewed
- The Curse of Bridge Hollow — 25.1 million hours viewed
- Blackout — 21 million hours viewed
- Mr. Harrigan’s Phone — 20 million hours viewed
- Sing — 12.3 million hours viewed
- The Redeem Team — 10.2 million hours viewed
- The Boss Baby — 7.3 million hours viewed
- Running with the Devil — 6.1 million hours viewed
- Blonde — 6 million hours viewed
- Black and Blue — 5.6 million hours viewed
More Netflix news
: Netflix Top 10: The most-watched shows in the world right now
