‘Encanto’ Tops Nielsen Streaming Chart, With ‘Hotel Transylvania: Transformania’ A Strong No. 3

Disney’s Encanto continued its remarkable run, landing at No. 1 on Nielsen’s weekly streaming chart with almost 1.5 billion total minutes of viewing.

That tally for the week of January 10 to 16, up about 6 million minutes from the previous week, easily outpaced No. 2 entry, Netflix’s Cobra Kai. The Karate Kid revamp still surpassed 1 billion minutes of viewing, but it relinquished first place after two weeks in the top spot.

In third place, with 823 million minutes of viewing, was Amazon Prime Video’s Hotel Transylvania: Transformania. About 36% of viewers were between the ages of 2 and 11 (compared with 38% for Encanto), with the audience 24% Hispanic and 16% African American, Nielsen said.

Like Encanto, the animated feature benefited from repeat viewing among younger viewers. Factoring in No. 4 title, Cocomelon, the top of the weekly chart has a distinctly family-oriented feel. (Perhaps the Omicron variant’s sweep across the country in January helps explain it, given schools were technically in session in mid-January?)

Another major Disney+ title, The Book Of Boba Fett, slipped off the top 10 with 467 million minutes of viewing. Episode length is a challenge for new series given the Netflix methodology, especially for shows released one episode at a time. The newest episode of the Star Wars spinoff show was its shortest yet, at 37 minutes.

Encanto‘s win is a rare one for a non-Netflix title since Nielsen began compiling the streaming rankings in mid-2020. It comes three weeks after the film arrived on Disney+ on December 24 after a month-long run exclusively in theaters. Along the way, the film has been nominated for multiple Oscars and scored the first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for a Disney animated song since “A Whole New World” from Aladdin in 1992.

In addition to the two animated standouts on the chart, another feature film cracked the top 10: Netflix’s Brazen, a thriller starring Alyssa Milano. It racked up 531 million minutes, good for the No. 10 spot.

Netflix also saw good results from the new season of Cheer, which helped the show finish No. 7, with 629 million minutes of viewing.

Nielsen measures only streaming via a TV screen (meaning mobile is not counted) for Apple TV+, Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. It releases the numbers after about a month’s delay.

Here is the full top 10:

Encanto (Disney+) – film, 1.488 billion minutes of viewing

Cobra Kai (Netflix) – 40 episodes, 1.038B min.

Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (Prime Video) – film, 823M min.

NCIS (Netflix) – 354 eps., 711M min.

Cocomelon (Netflix) – 15 eps., 707M min.

Criminal Minds (Netflix) – 320 eps., 687M min.

Cheer (Netflix) – 15 eps., 629M min.

The Witcher (Netflix) – 16 eps., 624M min.

Stay Close (Netflix) – 8 eps., 558M min.

Brazen (Netflix) – film, 531M min.