Nearly five years after Netflix first bowed its Top 10 lists, Disney+ is following suit.
Disney’s flagship streaming service on Wednesday launched “Top 10 Today,” a daily list showcasing popular movies and series on the platform. The goal — as it has been with Netflix, which pioneered the feature — is to drive engagement on Disney+ and give subscribers another way to find their a new title to stream.
Disney+’s Top 10 Today list will vary for individual subscriber, depending on factors the account’s content rating, subscription plan (for example, subscribers of the Disney+/Hulu bundle will see titles from both services) and location (the list is different for each country as title availability varies by market). At launch, the Disney+ Top 10 Today list will not be available to Junior Mode (i.e. kids) profiles.
Disney says the Disney+ Top 10 Today is not simply a ranking of the “most watched” titles in a given territory. Rather, the list “takes several factors into account, including total views at the episode and movie level within a day and the growing popularity of new titles released during that time frame.” That’s different from the viewership information Disney+ periodically releases for popular shows and movies, calculated based on total subscriber stream time divided by runtime.
In the U.S., the top 10 titles on Oct. 30 for Disney+/Hulu bundle customers are: 1993 film “Hocus Pocus”; Disney+ original series “Agatha All Along”; 2022 sequel “Hocus Pocus 2”; “Halloweentown”; “The Simpson’s Most Wonderful Time of the Year”; “Venom”; “Mickey’s Spooky Stories”; “Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge”; ABC’s “High Potential”; and “Haunted Mansion.”
Unlike the top 10 lists on Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max, the Disney+ version lumps TV shows and movies together. That the same approach that Disney-owned Hulu took when it launched its top 15 ranking in September 2023.
