Jan 30, 2024

The seven most streamed films last year were all animated.

Nielsen, a U.S. data and analytics company that tracks television and streaming viewing habits, has released its list of the most streamed movies and series in 2023.

Animated films released theatrically in the past occupy the top seven spots, with films from years past still attracting audiences. Nielsen's chart seems to suggest that films that spend time in theaters benefit from that exposure, sometimes for years after their theatrical release is over.

Last year's top-rated film was Disney's 2016 animated feature film "Moana," which has been in the top four for four consecutive years. More impressively, the film, now eight years old, has set Nielsen's all-time single-year record for the most minutes watched in a single year with 11.6 billion. Since Nielsen began tracking streaming data, people have watched about 80 billion minutes of "Moana," or about 152,200 years, which equates to roughly 775 million full viewings.

Another Disney catalog film, "Encanto," fell to second place in 2023 after holding the top spot the previous year.

The only new animated films to make the 2023 list were Illumination's Super Mario Brothers Movie, available on Netflix and Peacock, and Pixar's Elemental, streaming on Disney+. While the box office numbers were wide apart with Mario at $1.36 billion and Elemental at $496.4 million, the two films were very close at 8.8 billion and 8.6 billion minutes watched, respectively. This is especially impressive since Mario was available on Peacock more than a month before Elemental hit Disney+.

Fifth and sixth were Illumination Pictures' "Sing 2" (2021) and "Minions: The Rise of Gru" (2022).

But there was a real surprise at No. 7: Disney's "Anna and the Snow Queen," released in 2013 and available for streaming starting in 2019, moved up one spot from No. 8 in 2022 to No. 7 in 2023.

When it comes to series, animation doesn't fare much better, especially on the direct streaming list, where after a strong showing in the Nielsen ratings and Netflix's H1 2023 data dump, an IP expected to be further leveraged, Netflix's " Only "Gabby's Dollhouse" made the list. Gabby's inclusion on the list, however, is an improvement from 2022, when no original animated series even made the top 15.

Acquired animated series fared slightly better in 2023, with Disney+'s Bluey (#2) and Netflix's Cocomelon (#5) making the top 10; Bluey's viewing hours doubled from the previous year, and it was the top kids show in 2021 and 2022 Cocomelon, which was the top children's program in 2021 and 2022.

Jamie's take: According to Nielsen data, releasing a movie in theaters prior to streaming seems to have benefits that last for years after the movie has finished its theatrical run; in 2022, the second most streamed movie was Pixar's "Turning Red"; in 2022, the second most streamed movie was "The Last of Us" by Pixar, which was the first movie to be streamed by Pixar, It didn't even make the top 10 in 2023. We are still in the early days of streaming statistics, but it certainly seems that studios dropping movies directly to streaming platforms is doing lasting harm to the legacy of those films. These new Nielsen statistics strongly argue that even films with average theatrical releases, such as "The Elemental," "Encanto" (which was only in theaters for four weeks), and "The Thing 2," benefit from the lingering effects of their theatrical releases.