rewrite this title We Sure Watched a Lot of Old Netflix Hits in the First Half of the Year

Netflix released its biannual viewership report on Thursday, ahead of its second-quarter earnings call. The findings represent engagement numbers for the first six months of 2025, which equate to about 99% of what was watched between January and June. The hit TV series Adolescence and the action film Back in Action, which starred Jamie Foxx (in his first on-screen role since his hospitalization) and Cameron Diaz, topped the charts. 

Surprisingly, some Netflix originals released in 2023 and earlier have shown staying power on the streaming service.

TV shows Orange Is the New Black, Money Heist, Lucifer and Ozark clocked in over 100 million hours of viewing in the first half of the year, with fans binge-watching every season of each series. Stranger Things remains popular this year, too. Holiday action movie Red Notice (which stars Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans) and family films Leo and We Can Be Heroes charted more than 20 million views in the first half of the year. Talk about longevity.

Netflix’s earnings report shows a revenue jump of 16%. Considering the over 95 billion hours of content watched by the streamer’s global audience throughout the first six months of the year, that growth makes sense. 

The company’s investment in live programming has also paid off, with shows like WWE Raw drawing over 280 million viewing hours since its premiere in January. Their “local for local” strategy, which invests in creating content tailored to cultures and regions outside the US, has also been working. 

More than one-third of viewership was tied to non-English-language titles, including the German film, Exterritorial. Nearly half of the 25 most-watched programs in the first half of 2025 were non-English, including Squid Game, which was the third-most-watched show.