Netflix has released the latest edition of its What We Watched report, breaking down viewership numbers on the platform through the second half of 2024. And with more than 94 billion hours of content engagement logged in this timeframe, the platform’s numbers are up by 5% compared to the second half of 2023.

Holiday programming did a good job of pulling in young audiences between July and December 2024, and two kids titles made the coveted top 10 most-watched movies list: A new Halloween-themed short film called Sing: Thriller (pictured, 77 million views) and 2018 feature film Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch (67 million views). 

Both hail from Illumination/Universal Pictures, validating Netflix’s recent decision to renew the content licensing deal granting it access to Universal’s popular kids titles. Stemming from this library, DreamWorks Animation’s 2023 pic Trolls Band Together (61 million views) and Illumination’s 2016 film Sing (58 million views) also finished just outside the top-10 list.

“Animated films continue to drive high engagement,” the streamer stated in a blog post, calling out other top performers like Locksmith Animation’s holiday release That Christmas (60 million views) and Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie (56 million views) from Nickelodeon Movies. But CG-animated fantasy pic Spellbound—which finally launched in November following Skydance’s 2023 pivot from Apple TV+ to Netflix—was a relative underperformer, netting just over 35 million views.

On the TV side of things, preschool content enjoyed consistent engagement in line with previous editions of this report. CoComelon and CoComelon Lane collectively generated 148 million views, all seasons combined. This figure makes CoComelon the most-watched series-based IP on the streamer for the full year, according to Moonbug Entertainment. 

It’s worth noting that Netflix’s data dump breaks down the most-watched series on its platform by seasons rather than individual shows. In the top-100 ranking, multiple seasons of Peppa Pig made appearances, with the sixth season generating 22.4 million views, followed by seasons one and three each scoring 17 million views. DreamWorks’ Gabby’s Dollhouse drew in 20.4 million views with its 10th season, and season two of Pinkfong’s Bebefinn (16.5 million views) also performed well.

In terms of tween/teen content, the first season of Wednesday (which originally debuted in 2022) is still pulling in a significant audience at 17.4 million views, and the third season of Heartstopper (which launched in October 2024) did 10.9 million. 

In its blogpost, Netflix made note of the fact that no single title accounts for more than 1% of total viewing on the platform. “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.”

Image credit: Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures