The immediate future of the theatrical industry is still looking incredibly grim almost a year on, with movies once again being shuffled around the schedule as business shows very little signs of returning to anything approaching normality anytime soon. The Coronavirus pandemic has ravaged the entertainment industry as a whole, but one of the very few beneficiaries have been streaming services.
With multiplexes still shuttered around the world, every major platform saw a huge uptick in subscriber numbers during 2020, with overall viewership jumping by a massive 85%. Netflix may have canceled a much higher number of original shows than usual as a cost-cutting measure, but looking at the facts, it would appear that everything is going swimmingly for the market leaders.
Seven of the company’s ten most-watched original movies ever were released between March and December of last year, while the recent success of French miniseries Lupin, which is poised to become Netflix’s second biggest show ever, means that five of the streamer’s seven all-time most popular small screen exclusives have all debuted within the last ten months.
The good news just keeps on coming for Netflix, too, after the announcement was made that the 200 million subscriber milestone had officially been passed, with over eight million new customers signing up in the last quarter of 2020 alone. That’s a mind-boggling share of the audience, putting them over 50 million households ahead of nearest rivals Amazon Prime.
However, Disney Plus is catching up fast, with the Mouse House rocketing past 90 million subs in just over a year, a number that’s only set to increase exponentially looking at the sheer volume of high profile content in the works, and confidence from the boardroom that they can eclipse Netflix by the end of next year.