Oct 25, 2022

'Kaiju' Becomes Netflix's Most Watched Original Animated Film

Netflix reported that its largest original animated feature to date is The Sea Beast.

In its Q3 earnings report, Netflix revealed that the Chris Williams-directed film was viewed for 165 million hours. (These hours are for the first 28 days of the film, Netflix's de facto period for measuring viewership.)

Whether Netflix considers "original" animated feature films to be those that it participated in the development of, such as "Klaus," "Back to the Outback," "Over the Moon," and "Willow Bees," "I Lost My Body," "Mitchells vs. Machines," and "The Ramblers"; it is unclear whether it also includes original works picked up after completion.

It is also unclear how "Kaiju" fared against "Mitchells vs. Machines," which Netflix touted as the most-watched animated film of 2021. Last year, Netflix adopted a different rating method than viewing hours and instead calculated the number of households watching.

Netflix also reports viewing hours for successful non-animated films, which helps to give an idea of how animation fares in the big picture: for "The Gray Man" (254 million hours), "Purple Hearts" (229 million hours), Danish film Loving Adults (67 million hours), and the Korean film Carter (65 million hours).

Streamers did not report viewership numbers for animated series due to the fact that no animated series had a breakout year in 2022. However, they do report viewing hours for several live-action films: "Stranger Things" Season 4 (1.35 billion hours), "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story" (1.35 billion hours), "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story" (824 million hours), "The Sandman" (351 million hours).

Netflix Animation's original feature animation pipeline is picking up considerably in the second half of 2022; Netflix plans to release four new films in the coming months: "Wendell & Wild", "My Father's Dragon, Guillermo del Toro's "Pinocchio," and "Scrooge: A Christmas Carol."