Netflix has had an up and down kind of year. Sure, it experienced its first-ever subscriber dip and laid people off, but it also had a series of huge hits. And that’s still ongoing. According to Deadline, the new series Wednesday clocked in a staggering 341.23 million hours viewed during its first full week of availability, setting a new record for the streamer.
Specifically, that record is “most hours watched for an English-language show on Netflix.” The record was previously held by Stranger Things, which notched 335 million hours viewed after season 4 premiered earlier this year. This is certainly a good sign for the new show, an Addams Family spinoff directed by Tim Burton. According to Netflix, 50 million households tuned in for this first week.
Or course, both Wednesday and Stranger Things fall pretty far short of the most-watched show in Netflix’s history, which is Squid Game: during its peak week; the Korean-language drama racked up a stupefying 571.8 million hours viewed.
Wednesday beats viewing record for Stranger Things, still can’t topple Squid Game
Squid Game and Stranger Things are already confirmed to be coming back for more episodes, and I think we can safely assume that Wednesday will join them. I like that two out of the three most watched shows on Netflix aren’t from big franchises. Viva la creativity!
That said, Wednesday looks pretty fun, and is getting solid reviews. As the title suggests, the show zeroes in on Wednesday Addams, played here by Jenna Ortega, as she goes off to an ooky-spooky boarding school for creepy kids. The show also stars Catherine Zeta-Jones, Luis Guzmán, Fred Arimisen, Gwendoline Christie and Cristina Ricci, who played Wednesday in The Addams Family movies from the ’90s.
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