A Summer Slow Burn Is Poised To Surpass 'Red Notice' as Netflix's All-Time Biggest Movie

For nearly four years, Rawson Marshall Thurber’s Red Notice has held the spot at the top of Netflix’s all-time most streamed films with around 231 million views. That movie cost $200 million to make and starred three of the biggest movie stars on the planet — in Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot — at arguably the peaks of their respective careers.

The number two film at the moment was released two months ago, just generated an additional 25 million views in its eighth week, and the film’s most recognizable actor — at least in America — is Ken Jeong. But with 185 million views, so far, and with 30 more days remaining in the window to be counted for Netflix’s most watched film within the first 90 days of release, KPop Demon Hunters is on a clear trajectory to surpass Red Notice.

And that’s because, two months after its release, not only are new fans still discovering the movie every day, there are millions of kids (and adults) rewatching and rewatching it. Described by Jessie Wallace in his review for us as the Best K-Pop Demon Hunting Musical Action Comedy Ever, the Netflix film has quietly become the biggest hits of the summer.

To put the 184 million views of K-Pop Demon Hunters into perspective, the summer’s biggest box-office hit, Superman, has sold about 30-33 million tickets this summer, a fraction of the number of views that K-Pop Demon Hunters has amassed.

And it’s not just doing well on Netflix, it’s crushing on Spotify, as well. It has eight tracks currently on Spotify’s top 100, including three in the top five! “Golden” is the top hit on Billboard’s music chart, and it’s pulling in around 8 million daily streams, while “Your Idol” fetches around 4.5 million daily streams.

K-Pop Demon Hunters is a massive global hit for Netflix, and it’s not even a Netflix produced film. It comes from Sony, which may be regretting not releasing the film into theaters (though, there’s obviously no guarantee that it would have been as massive a hit). According to Matt Belloni over on Puck, Sony received only $20 million from Netflix for the movie and doesn’t get a penny more, no matter how well it does.

The good news for Sony, however, is that it does own the rights to the inevitable sequels and spin-offs, although according to Puck, “Netflix has no obligation to renegotiate on the follow-up films,” although it almost certainly will pay the studio more for follow-ups if it wants to keep the billion-dollar franchise going well into the future.

Here are the 10 biggest films in Netflix history (in the first 90 days of release):

1. Red Notice (230,900,000 views)
2. KPop Demon Hunters (184,600,000 views)
3. Carry-On (172,100,000 views)
4. Don’t Look Up (171,400,000 views)
5. The Adam Project (157,600,000 views)
6. Bird Box (157,400,000 views)
7. Back in Action (147,200,000 views)
8. Leave the World Behind (143,400,000 views)
9. The Gray Man (139,300,000 views)
10. Damsel (138,000,000 views)