Directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans and produced by Sony Pictures Animation, KPop Demon Hunters accumulated 481.6 million views on Netflix in 2025 alone, a figure that crowned it the streamer’s most-watched movie ever. The title previously held by Red Notice, which featured three major stars — Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, and Dwayne Johnson — to boost its popularity. By the time the 2026 Academy Awards arrived, the film had won Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song for “Golden,” making Kang the first filmmaker of South Korean descent to win in that category. Following this universal critical and commercial acclaim, Netflix has confirmed a sequel, with Kang and Appelhans returning, and the platform is discussing multiple television spinoffs to build on the IP.
While KPop Demon Hunters is a major cultural landmark, the movie generated just 9.2 million views in its first week, a figure that’s way behind Netflix’s biggest hits. The film grew through sustained word of mouth, algorithmic compounding, and repeat viewings that kept it in Netflix’s weekly Top 10 for an unprecedented 31 weeks. However, when considering the first week, several animated movies got better results on Netflix, even though none have reached the same prestige as KPop Demon Hunters.
Produced by DreamWorks Animation and written by Charlie Kaufman, Orion and the Dark follows an anxious elementary school student named Orion (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) who confronts his fears by journeying through the night alongside the physical manifestation of Dark (voiced by Paul Walter Hauser). The film launched on Netflix on February 2, 2024, edging past the 9.2 million views KPop Demon Hunters got. The premise, which personifies childhood fear as a gentle giant with an emotional arc of its own, resonated with families seeking something smarter than the genre average, and the unconventional structural elements Kaufman brought to an animated film earned the project critical acclaim. Still, without the viral musical hooks that would eventually drive KPop Demon Hunters to historic longevity, Orion and the Dark followed the trajectory of most animated films and faded from the charts within weeks.
Aardman Animations’ Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget arrived on Netflix on December 15, 2023, carrying the weight of a 23-year gap between itself and the beloved original. Unsurprisingly, the movie converted that nostalgia into 11.9 million views in its first three days on the platform. That figure placed the sequel fourth on the chart for its debut week, behind only Leo, and confirmed that Aardman’s stop-motion aesthetic and the returning characters of Ginger (now voiced by Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky (voiced by Zachary Levi) had enough goodwill. Director Sam Fell’s film introduces Ginger and Rocky’s daughter Molly (voiced by Bella Ramsey) and pivots the franchise toward heist-movie territory, giving the sequel enough novelty to attract viewers who had aged with the original.
Skydance Animation’s Swapped premiered on Netflix on May 1, 2026, and opened to 15.5 million views in its first three days, a figure Netflix itself described as the biggest three-day launch for an animated film on the platform since Leo in 2023. Directed by Nathan Greno, the body-swap comedy follows Ollie (voiced by Michael B. Jordan), a small woodland creature, and Ivy (voiced by uno Temple), a majestic bird, who are forced to inhabit each other’s bodies and navigate their species’ long-standing rivalry in the process. Swapped went on to set a separate record in its second week, accumulating 38.7 million views, the highest single-week total any animated Netflix original had ever achieved. That second-week surge shows the movie has genuine staying power, but even without that subsequent performance, the opening weekend alone would have positioned Swapped far above the quiet debut that KPop Demon Hunters needed months of compounding to overcome.
Chris Williams, whose prior credits include Big Hero 6 and Moana, directed The Sea Beast for Netflix. The film debuted on the platform on July 8, 2022, generating approximately 17.5 million views in its opening three days. That number nearly doubled KPop Demon Hunters‘ opening weekend figure, and it did so on the strength of an original narrative about a nautical adventure following legendary monster hunter Jacob Holland (voiced by Karl Urban) after the orphan Maisie Brumble (voiced by Zaris-Angel Hator) stows away on his ship and begins to challenge everything he believes about the creatures they hunt. The Sea Beast went on to accumulate 165 million hours viewed over its first five months on the platform and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature at the 95th ceremony, a direct result of the blockbuster aesthetic Williams brought to the project.
Adam Sandler’s Leo, which launched on Netflix on November 21, 2023, set the record for the biggest debut in the history of Netflix animated originals by accumulating 34.6 million views in its first six days, a number that is more than three times the opening weekend of KPop Demon Hunters. The musical comedy follows an aging lizard named Leo (voiced by Sandler) who has spent decades as an elementary school class pet and decides, in what he believes are his final years, to impart life lessons to a group of anxious fifth graders before he dies. The film launched on a Tuesday, directly ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, and Netflix turned the most reliable family-viewing window into a record-setting debut. Sandler’s name carried a proven audience to the film, and the subject matter of childhood anxiety and mortality gave parents a reason to watch it with children rather than simply putting it on as background.
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