A surprising stat about the viewing habits of Netflix users. In the second half of 2024, the most-watched piece of animation on the platform was an animated short.
The short was Ilumination’s Halloween-themed special Sing: Thriller, an 11-minute piece based on Michael Jackson’s iconic “Thriller” music video. The Garth Jennings-directed title was viewed 77 million times through December 2024.
This data comes from Netflix’s latest engagement report, which the streamer releases twice a year. The self-reported dataset covers 99% of all the video watched on the platform. Netflix measures engagement through views (total hours divided by runtime). The full report, tracking over 15,500 individual titles, can be downloaded HERE as an Excel file.
Animation performed well on the feature-length side, with eight of Netflix’s top 20 titles in the category being animated. Setting aside Sing: Thriller, which was grouped into the film category and was the most-viewed animation, here are the top 10 animated features that viewers watched between July and December 2024:
- The Grinch (66.5 million views)
- Trolls Band Together (60.7 million)
- That Christmas (60.1 million)
- Sing (58.2 million)
- Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie (55.6 million)
- Minions: the Rise of Gru (51.8 million)
- Paw Patrol: The Movie (48.1 million)
- The Emoji Movie (46.2 million)
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie (45.8 million)
- Minions (41.7 million)
Two of these titles are Netflix originals — That Christmas and Saving Bikini Bottom — while the others are licensed films from American studios. Illumination led the way with half of Netflix’s most popular animated movies.
Netflix’s high-profile original Spellbound from John Lasseter-run Skydance Animation appears in the top 50 with 35.8 million views. An older original, the Adam Sandler-led Leo, continued to be a strong performer for the streamer, drawing 35 million views. The majority of the animated titles towards the top of the list, however, were produced by other Hollywood studios.
The streamer offered few feature-length animation options last year that were non-cg or non-kids/family titles. One of its few 2d titles in 2024 was Studio Ponoc’s The Imaginary but the film didn’t reach a wide audience, earning only 2.5 million views. Still, we hope they make a bigger effort to expand beyond this very limited type of animation product currently on offer, because they have a tremendous opportunity to diversify their feature animation offerings and reach teen and young adult audiences globally.
On the series side, none of the titles in the top 20 were animated. The first animated project to appear on the list is at #23 and it’s the second season of Arcane with 23.9 million views. After Arcane, the streamer’s top-viewed animated series are:
- Peppa Pig season 6 (22.4 million views)
- Gabby’s Dollhouse S10 (20.4 million)
- Dan Da Dan (19.6 million)
- The Bad Guys: Haunted Heist (19.5 million)
- Masha and the Bear S5 (17.2 million)
- Peppa Pig S1 (17 million)
- Peppa Pig S3 (17 million)
- Bebefinn S2 (16.5 million)
- Cocomelon S1 (16.4 million)
Series animation on Netflix seems to perform particularly well with preschoolers. There are a handful of exceptions with Arcane and Dan Da Dan, which lean young adult, but the top shows, even beyond these titles, are almost entirely for the youngest set.
Much farther down the list are all of the streamer’s anime and adult animation offerings. In the press release accompanying this dataset, Netflix pointed out that it doesn’t matter where content ranks on its list because their success stems not from any single show or film but rather the vast amount of content that it offers:
Success for a show or film on Netflix comes in all shapes and sizes. We have breakout hits with huge audiences and popular shows with smaller ones. But no single title — not even our most popular — accounts for more than 1% of total viewing on Netflix. For example, Squid Game S2, which had the most hours viewed in this report, accounted for only 0.7% of viewing. It’s why we invest in a wide variety of quality shows and films and why we need to make them great, so that every time a member comes to Netflix they press play and stay.
