Class is back in session. FlixPatrol reports School of Rock is the sixth most popular film on Netflix in the US today.
The 2003 comedy starring Jack Black was added to the streaming service on Sep. 1, and it has since gained the attention of nostalgic fans.
The enduring appeal of School of Rock
Black plays the role of Dewey Finn, a washed-up punk impersonating his friend and substitute-teacher Ned Schneebly (Mike White) at a prestigious middle school. There, he woos the school’s principal (Joan Cusack) while secretly teaching his class how to play and perform in a rock band. Among the celebrity cast is an adolescent Miranda Cosgrove who, as the tone-deaf star pupil of the class, becomes the band’s manager.
School of Rock was a box office hit and received critical praise from the likes of Roger Ebert. Black was nominated for Best Actor at the Golden Globes and won MTV’s Best Comedic Performance award. Until 2015, the film was also the top-grossing music comedy. It was finally overtaken by the a cappella centered Pitch Perfect 2.
Since then, the film has made repeated resurgences. A sequel was in the works in 2008, but never came to fruition. In 2015, an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical adaptation debuted on Broadway. It would run for four years. The latest attempt to re-up the name was Nickelodeon’s 2016 TV series starring Breanna Yde that ran for three seasons.
FlixPatrol launched in April 2019. The site filters publicly available data on streaming services’ trending series and regional popularity, then synthesizes data into an in-house algorithm to rank popular services’ best-performing TVs and movies. Services tracked include Netflix, HBO Max, and Google Play.