Wednesday breaks yet another extraordinary Netflix record amid Covid controversy

Series is also on track to surpass Ryan Murphy’s ‘Dahmer’

Netflix’s hit series Wednesday has broken another viewing record in its second week on the platform.

Since its release last month, the series – which stars Jenna Ortega as Addams Family character Wednesday Addams – has proven to be a huge success among viewers.

After it beat out Stranger Things to score the most viewing time in a single week for an English-language series on Netflix, it has now broken its own record in the week of 28 November to 4 December.

This means Wednesday marks the first time any English-language series on Netflix has reached 400 million hours in a week. Last year’s Squid Game had a high of 571.76 million hours in its third week of release.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, the eight-episode show is now ranking number three in the streamer’s all-time ranking of English language shows, with a total of 752.52 million hours viewed.

It is on track to pass Ryan Murphy’s Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which has 856.22 million hours), and has a good chance of becoming the third show on Netflix (in any language) to pass a billion hours of watch time in its first four weeks.

Both Squid Game and season four of Stranger Things have reached this milestone, raking in 1.65 billion hours and 1.35 billion hours in the first four weeks of release, respectively.

This is not the first record that Wednesday has broken.

(Netflix)

The series had a big opening week on the streamer, raking in 341.2 million hours of viewing worldwide last week, and therefore beating the record set by the fourth season of Stranger Things as the best week for any English-language series on the streamer.

Some viewers have worried, however, that the success of Wednesday will lead Netflix to greenlight fewer shows based on original ideas and focus more on existing franchises.

The series has recently faced some backlash, however, after Ortega revealed that she had Covid while filming her now famous dance sequence, with some calling the decision to shoot the scene “dangerous” and “unethical”.