‘Parasite’ Breaks Streaming Records on Hulu in First Week, Becomes Second Most Watched Film Ever on Service
In the first week since “Parasite” became available for streaming exclusively on Hulu, Bong Joon Ho’s Best Picture-winning drama has broken streaming records and become one of the most-watched movies ever on the service.
Hulu revealed to TheWrap that since it made its debut on April 8, “Parasite” is now the second most-watched movie overall on Hulu and is the #1 most-watched independent or foreign language film to ever run on the service.
The film already has more lifetime views on Hulu in one week of streaming than the entire duration of even recent studio hits like “A Quiet Place,” “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World,” “Transformers: The Last Knight” and “Creed II” that in some cases have already been on the platform for months.
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A representative for Hulu clarified that analytics are only available for movies that are currently on the service and can’t account for films that left the service years ago, but they’re confident in the strong performance of “Parasite” being near the top due to Hulu’s growth in subscribers over the years.
Hulu made some waves last week when the streamer clapped back at Twitter trolls who complained that they didn’t like watching subtitles. “If you don’t want to read subtitles, you can always learn Korean,” Hulu said in response to one tweet.
Hulu also shared some additional data about how users are spending their quarantine time. Since it launched three weeks ago, the Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington series “Little Fires Everywhere” has emerged as the #1 drama overall on Hulu, generating more hours of viewing than any other drama series past or current. And last week it was the #1 most-watched drama overall. Further, “The Golden Girls” continues to perform strongly and was one of the Top 10 most watched comedies on the service.
“Parasite” won four Oscars, including Best Picture, making it the first time any film not in the English language had ever won the top prize from the Academy.
Hulu also added three other Bong films alongside “Parasite,” including his first film “Barking Dogs Never Bite,” “Mother” and “The Host.” “Parasite” is also set to soon join the Criterion Collection, as will his film “Memories of Murder.”
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