Indian movies, shows clock over 1 billion views on Netflix in 2023, says streamer in new report

Mumbai, May 24 (PTI) Series and movies from India clocked over one billion views on Netflix in 2023 with “Jaane Jaan” the most watched film and “The Railway Men” the most watched series, the streaming service said on Friday in its second engagement report.

The report, titled “What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report”, presented the streaming service’s viewership data for the period of July to December 2023.

Subscribers across the world watched about 90 billion hours of content on Netflix in the second half of 2023.

From India, Sujoy Ghosh’s “Jaane Jaan” was the most watched movie on Netflix with 20.2 million views, followed by Shah Rukh Khan’s “Jawan” with 16.2 million views and Vishal Bhardwaj’s “Khufiya” with 12.1 million views.

The other popular titles include “OMG 2” (11.5 million views), “Lust Stories 2” (9.2 million views), “Dream Girl 2” (8.2 million views) and true-crime documentary “Curry & Cyanide” (8.2 million views).

From the series that were launched on Netflix, “The Railway Men”, starring Kay Kay Menon, Babil Khan and Divyenndu, turned out to be the top title.

The series, set against the backdrop of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Leak, attracted 10.6 million views, followed by Suvinder Vicky and Barun Sobti-starrer “Kohraa” (6.4 million views), Raj and DK’s “Gun and Gulaabs” (6.4 million views) and “Kaala Paani” (5.8 million views).

Globally, non-English shows and movies are very popular with Netflix subscribers, making up nearly a third of all viewing, according to the report.

This includes Korean (with nine per cent of viewing), Spanish (seven per cent) and Japanese (five per cent) language stories captured the biggest share of viewing outside of English.

The report highlighted stand-out titles like “Dear Child” (53 million views) from Germany, “Forgotten Love” (43 million views) from Poland, “Pact of Silence” (21 million views) from Mexico, “Mask Girl” (19 million views) from Korea, “Yu Yu Hakusho” (17 million views) from Japan and “Berlin” (11 million views) from Spain.

The most watched movie title on Netflix was “Leave the World Behind”, starring Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts, generating 121 million views, followed by Adam Sandler’s animated film “Leo” (96 million views).

From the series side, anime-inspired live action series “One Piece” attracted 72 million views.

The report also highlighted that fan favourites original titles like “Wednesday”, “Red Notice” and “Squid Game” continued to bring in millions of views in 2023, long after they premiered on Netflix.