Thu. Mar 28th, 2024


I have a new ritual every Tuesday afternoon: I head to Netflix’s Top 10 website, and I see what weird stuff is popular on Netflix.

Why? I don’t know. I guess I’m just fascinated what movies translate around the world, and which do not. At the present moment, two of Netflix’s homegrown originals are big chart-topping successes: The Adam Sandler sports movie Hustle and the action thriller Interceptor. If you peruse Netflix’s weekly top ten lists, which are available for every country on the planet that offers the streaming service, you’ll see that after those two original hits many of the most popular movies are older titles. Often they’re not even things that were popular favorites when they were originally released in theaters. In some cases, they were out and out flops, both critically and commercially.

For proof, here are ten library titles that are currently very popular on Netflix all over the world (in some cases they are hits in more than a dozen different countries simultaneously). Why did these random (sometimes extremely crummy) films connect with audiences on streaming now? I have no idea. But suddenly, viewers all over the world are consuming millions of hours of a 25-year-old disaster movie about a deadly asteroid. Go figure.

Old Movies That Are Surprising Hits on Netflix

These movies didn’t make much of an impression in theaters, but they’re now huge favorites all over the world on Netflix.

Netflix’s Most Popular English-Language TV Shows Ever

These are the most popular TV shows ever on Netflix (in English), based on hours viewed in their first 28 days on streaming.



By Dave Jenks

Dave Jenks is an American novelist and Veteran of the United States Marine Corps. Between those careers, he’s worked as a deckhand, commercial fisherman, divemaster, taxi driver, construction manager, and over the road truck driver, among many other things. He now lives on a sea island, in the South Carolina Lowcountry, with his wife and youngest daughter. They also have three grown children, five grand children, three dogs and a whole flock of parakeets. Stinnett grew up in Melbourne, Florida and has also lived in the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, and Cozumel, Mexico. His next dream is to one day visit and dive Cuba.