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Netflix released its biannual viewership report Thursday alongside its earnings, with U.K. breakout hit “Adolescence” topping the TV side and action-comedy “Back in Action” starring Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz landing as the most-viewed movie on the service.
The latest Engagement Report covers about 99% of the viewing of what Netflix members watched from January through June 2025. Netflix measures engagement by views, which it calculates by total hours viewed divided by runtime. Overall, subscribers watched 95 billion hours globally in the first half of 2025, up slightly from 94 billion in the year-earlier period. That 1% uptick in engagement came amid higher competition for Netflix, co-CEO Greg Peters said on the earnings interview Thursday, and he said the company expects a stronger increase in viewing for the second half of 2025 “given the strength of our second-half slate.”
More than one-third of all viewing came from non-English language titles, and 10 of the 25 most-watched series in the first half of the year were non-English, according to Netflix.
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Leading the pack in TV: “Squid Game,” the South Korean hit series, which drew 231 million views across all three seasons in the first half of the year. Its final season became our third most-watched program of the half, reaching 72 million views in just four days. Overall, drama “Adolescence” was the No. 1 most-watched show with 145 million views; other top-performing U.K. series included “Missing You” (58 million views), “Black Mirror” Season 7 (31 million) and “Dept. Q” Season 1 (25 million).
Other standouts in TV were limited series “Zero Day” starring Robert De Niro with 63 million views (No. 4 for the first half of the year), and preschool series “Ms. Rachel” Season 1 from YouTuber Rachel Accurso with 53 million views (No. 7).
In addition, WWE — which premiered on Netflix in January — generated more than 280 million view hours across all its events, including “WWE Raw.”
The top three films on Netflix were originals “Back in Action” (165 million viewers), Tyler Perry’s “Straw” starring Taraji P. Henson (103 million) and “The Life List” (96 million) starring Sofia Carson. Non-English language films also were popular with viewers worldwide, including “Exterritorial” (88 million) from Germany, “Counterattack” (71 million) from Mexico, “iHostage” (57 million) from the Netherlands, “Ad Vitam” (70 million) and “K.O.” (44 million) from France, “Bullet Train Explosion” (33 million) from Japan and “Jewel Thief – The Heist Begins” (23 million) from India.
Netflix noted that nearly half of viewing for originals in the first half of 2025 came from titles that debuted in 2023 or earlier. Those included series “Orange Is the New Black,” “Ozark” and “Money Heist,” which each had over 100 million hours viewed in the first half of 2025, while movies “Red Notice,” “Leo” and “We Can Be Heroes” each had more than 20 million views.
The full spreadsheet for Netflix’s Engagement Report for the first half of 2025 is available at this link.
Here are the top 10 TV shows for the period:
| Title | No. of Views |
| Adolescence: Limited Series | 144,800,000 |
| Squid Game: Season 2 | 117,300,000 |
| Squid Game: Season 3 | 71,500,000 |
| Zero Day: Limited Series | 61,300,000 |
| Missing You: Limited Series | 58,000,000 |
| American Murder: Gabby Petito: Season 1 | 56,100,000 |
| Ms. Rachel: Season 1 | 53,400,000 |
| Sirens: Limited Series | 53,300,000 |
| The Night Agent: Season 2 | 53,200,000 |
| Ginny & Georgia: Season 3 | 48,100,000 |
Here are the top 10 movies for the period:
| Title | No. of Views |
| Back in Action | 164,700,000 |
| Tyler Perry’s Straw | 102,900,000 |
| The Life List | 95,500,000 |
| Exterritorial | 87,500,000 |
| Havoc | 86,900,000 |
| The Secret Life of Pets 2 | 74,500,000 |
| The Electric State | 74,200,000 |
| Counterattack // Contraataque | 71,300,000 |
| Ad Vitam | 69,800,000 |
| Despicable Me 4 | 69,800,000 |
