In five previous semiannual data releases dating back to 2023, no Netflix movie or series had recorded more than 165 million views in six months. Then KPop Demon Hunters came along.
The animated smash, which already sits atop Netflix’s all-time movie rankings (which are measured over a title’s first 13 weeks of release), accumulated a ridiculous 481.6 million views worldwide in the second half of 2025. That is far and away the most views (calculated as total hours watched divided by running time) in a six-month period for any title, movie or series, ever on Netflix. (All figures in this story are based on the company’s first-party data unless otherwise noted.)
How much bigger has KPop Demon Hunters been than every other title? Well, its July-December view total beats the combined tally of the past three movies to lead Netflix’s semiannual charts: Back in Action (164.7 million views) for the first half of 2025, Carry-On (137.3 million) for the second half of 2024 and Damsel (143.8 million) for the first half of 2024. Those three total 445.8 million views worldwide, still 35.8 million views short of KPop Demon Hunters in the back half of last year.
KPop Demon Hunters had more than 3 1/2 times as many views as Happy Gilmore 2, which ranked second on Netflix’s list of films for July through December. That’s as big a gap as between Happy Gilmore 2 and the No. 29 movie on the list, Paw Patrol: The Movie (37.9 million views).
Stretching back to its premiere on June 20, and including the first 18 days of this year, KPop Demon Hunters has totaled more than 540 million views worldwide and is barely slowing down. It has spent 31 weeks on Netflix’s top 10 movie charts; in the United States, the movie had a 26-week run in Nielsen’s streaming top 10 that ended the week of Dec. 15.
On the series side of Netflix’s ledger, season two of Wednesday outdrew the end of Stranger Things in the second half of the year — mostly by virtue of having had a 16-week head start. Wednesday, which premiered in early August, racked up 123.5 million views by the end of the year to 93.5 million for Stranger Things 5, which debuted Nov. 26.
The end of Stranger Things also provided a huge boost in viewing for previous seasons: All four prior installments of the show finished among the top 15 series for the second half of the year, and they had a combined 186 million views. That’s a nearly fourfold increase from the first half of 2025.
Netflix says its viewers watched 96 billion hours’ worth of programming on the service from July through December, up 2 percent from the second half of 2024 and 1 percent from the first half of 2025. The company’s subscriber base grew by about 8 percent from the fourth quarter 2024 to the same period in 2025.
In its quarterly earnings report, Netflix noted that engagement for its original titles rose by about 9 percent in the second half of 2025 compared to a year earlier. That was partly offset, however, “by a year-over-year decline in viewing of non-branded view hours” — i.e., licensed series and films. “This decrease primarily reflected a lower volume of licensed, second-run content across most regions following an elevated period of licensing during 2023-2024 as a result of the WGA strike.”
Netflix’s top 15 movies and series for the second half of 2025 are below.
