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Just when you thought that Netflix couldn’t get any bigger, along came the third season of the hit show, Stranger Things. Breaking all previous viewing records, Netflix has confirmed that 40.7 million household accounts watched the show in the first four days since it launched globally on Thursday, July 4th.
That is more than any other Netflix show or movie in the history of the company. And of those 40.7 million, 18.2 million have actually finished the entire season already.
Since the show first aired in 2016, the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. From more than 616,000 votes on IMDB, it scores 8.9/10. Similarly, it has a 93% score on Rotten Tomatoes and viewers, it seems, cannot get enough.
For those of you who have never watched Stranger Things, it is a science fiction / horror mash-up set in the 80’s in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. Initially the story follows the adventures of four teenagers after the disappearance of one of their friends.
But with supernatural events constantly occurring in the town and the nearby Hawkins National Laboratory performing paranormal experiments, all is not what it seems. Especially when a portal to an alternate dimension ‘the Upside Down’ is discovered.
Stranger Things has created superstars in its young cast. Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo and Caleb McLaughlin are now household names. Not to mention the fact that Winona Ryder is now, once again, one of the biggest names in Hollywood.
Despite its incredible success, Stranger Things was on the verge of never getting made. The show’s creators, Matt and Ross Duffer approached around 15 different networks and cable companies with the idea, all of whom rejected it.
But in 2015, Dan Cohen and Shawn Levy bought the rights to the show and after reading the pilot, Netflix bought the entire season. And what a decision that turned out to be!
Churning out hit after hit appears to be a skill almost exclusively reserved for Netflix. This year alone, 45m households viewed The Umbrella Academy within its first month. And Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us is one of the most watched series every day since it was released in May.
Adam Sandler’s Murder Mystery garnered 30.9m viewers in its first three days of release, which broke the previous record held by Sandra Bullock’s Bird Box.
It would seem that Netflix can do no wrong but as its subscription numbers steadily increase so too does the demand for good quality entertainment. If they can keep hits like Stranger Things coming, they should be just fine.