Bill Murray comedy from 2014 provides surprise challenge to Encanto in battle to top streaming charts

‘St Vincent’ rose shockingly high in the streaming charts – but still fell short of Encanto’s huge ratings

A Bill Murray comedy from 2014 has emerged as a dark horse in Nielsen’s weekly cross-platform streaming charts.

St Vincent, which is available to stream on Netflix in the US (but not the UK), saw Murray play a curmudgeonly Vietnam veteran who befriends a single mother (Melissa McCarthy) and her son (Jaeden Martell) when they move in next door.

Disney Plus’s 2021 animation Encanto has held the top spot on Nielsen’s official top 10 streaming films list for weeks, and does so again in the latest report (per The Hollywood Reporter).

Nielsen measures viewing figures by minutes watched, and Encanto registered 1.22 billion minutes between 14 and 20 February (the most recent week).

However, after being made available on Netflix, St Vincent has taken the second spot with 411 million minutes watched.

This puts the film ahead of films including Netflix’s own The Tinder Swindler and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Nielsen began releasing its top 10 lists of streaming films and TV series in 2020. Data is collected and released with a five-week delay, and takes into account only US households.

Whether St Vincent managed to build on its surprise showing and challenge Encanto for the very top spot remains to be seen.