Hamilton stage show and Frozen II among most-streamed films of 2020, research reveals
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Nielsen has revealed the most streamed films and TV series of 2020.
The company crunched the numbers on all films streamed across 2020 on four platforms – Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and Disney Plus.
Lin-Manuel Miranda will be pretty pleased with the results – the filmed version of his stage show Hamilton (which you can watch now) came in at number six on the top streamed films of 2020, while Moana, which he penned the tunes for, came in at number two. The top spot was claimed by the hit sequel Frozen II (the stage version of Frozen is due to land in the West End later this year).
One thing to bear in mind – Nielsen's ratings are seemingly based entirely on connected TV viewers, rather than those done by mobile devices or computers. As such, the true number of spectators may be slightly different – children, for example, are much more likely to be shown films via TV, whereas teens and adults can be prone to watching via laptops.
Previous polls conducted by Variety had put Hamilton in the top spot for most-streamed movies of 2020, but Nielsen's ratings seem to include films that were released before 2020 and their criteria is done by number of minutes watched rather than individual "views".
The numbers are still massive though – according to the number crunching platform, over 6 BILLION minutes of Hamilton were watched last year on connected TVs. Which is slightly boggling – from our quick maths it essentially means the film (if watched the whole way through) was seen 38 million times in the space of less than six months.
On the TV side of things Netflix dominated the top ten lists, with David West Read (book writer for & Juliet) performing well with his work on Schitt's Creek. In the US, The Great British Baking Show also came in at number seven.
The stage production of Hamilton, about the creation of the USA and one of its founding fathers, has book, music and lyrics by Miranda. It is directed by Thomas Kail, with choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler and musical supervision and orchestrations by Alex Lacamoire and is based on Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton features scenic design by David Korins, costume design by Paul Tazewell, lighting design by Howell Binkley, sound design by Nevin Steinberg and hair and wig design by Charles G Lapointe.
