Picture: Netflix
Much has been made about the significant boost in viewership that Conclave, a recently released movie by Ed Berger about the process of selecting a pope, has received around the globe following the passing of Pope Francis earlier this week. Netflix is also seeing a noticeable uptick for its movie about the pope, titled The Two Popes, which first appeared on screens in December 2019. The movie is now featured in over two dozen daily top 10s since Pope Francis passed on April 21st at the age of 88.
Starring Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce, with Fernando Meirelles directing, the film centered on two of the most powerful leaders in the Catholic Church, who presented their cases for the Church’s future. The movie went on to be nominated for three Oscars, although, as we’ll come onto shortly, it wasn’t a huge viewership driver for the streamer upon its initial release.
Interestingly, too, Rideback is the production company behind the Netflix Original film. That company was run by Dan Lin, who in 2024 took over as head of film for Netflix.
Following the Pope’s passing, the film has begun to appear in the daily top 10 carousels in select countries for the first time. If we look at the daily top 10s, we can see that the movie has entered the charts in a dozen countries in total, with the majority being predominantly Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America (which makes sense, given that’s where the Pope was born). We’re also seeing a handful of other European countries with the movie returning to Netflix’s top 10s. Here’s how the top 10s break down so far:
| April 22nd | April 23rd | April 24th | April 25th | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Argentina | – | 4 | 4 | 5 |
| Bolivia | – | 10 | 6 | 5 |
| Chile | – | – | 10 | 6 |
| Colombia | – | 8 | 6 | 6 |
| Costa Rica | – | 4 | 6 | 5 |
| Croatia | – | 10 | 6 | 5 |
| Ecuador | – | 4 | 6 | 5 |
| Guatemala | – | 8 | 5 | 5 |
| Honduras | – | 8 | 8 | 5 |
| Hungary | 6 | 8 | 5 | 5 |
| Malta | – | – | – | 8 |
| Mexico | – | – | – | 8 |
| Nicaragua | – | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| Panama | – | 6 | 6 | 5 |
| Paraguay | 6 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Peru | – | 6 | 6 | 5 |
| Portugal | – | 5 | 4 | 4 |
| Romania | – | – | 9 | 6 |
| Salvador | – | 7 | 7 | 5 |
| Slovakia | 10 | 8 | 6 | 6 |
| Slovenia | – | – | – | 8 |
| Spain | – | 9 | 8 | 7 |
| Uruguay | – | – | – | 7 |
| Venezuela | – | – | – | 5 |
We’ve seen similar bumps with other global news events for other titles over the past few years. Following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Netflix’s flagship series The Crown began climbing the charts again as people sought to learn more or revisit the award-winning series. Last year, upon the vice presidential nomination of JD Vance, Hillbilly Elegy shot up the Netflix US charts. What’s less clear when this happens is whether Netflix is giving a title a slight advantage in its algorithm or purposely raising it (anecdotally, I saw the movie on my main carousel this morning) or whether it’s just a massive influx of traffic that then organically pushes it up.
The movie was by no means a normal hit for Netflix when it first released. Netflix never released any viewing statistics upon its initial release through its old system, which was before the daily top 10s were introduced and certainly before the weekly global top 10s. That was back when Netflix would only release viewing tidbits for their biggest titles using a, looking back, antiquated 2-minute system to measure viewership.
We can see, however, its performance throughout 2023 and 2024 through the Netflix Engagement Reports, where we know the movie gained 10.80 million viewing hours, which only equates to around 5.2 million views. For comparison, in the same timeframe, other 2019 movie releases, such as Marriage Story, garnered 7.2 million views, The Irishman had 28.7 million views, and Dolemite Is My Name had 3.6 million views. To put its performance into a greater perspective, in the most recently released Engagement Report, covering viewership from July to December 2024, it was the 2,154th most-watched movie.
We’ll get to see how much of an uplift this has in actual viewing hours and views when the first half of 2025 report is released, which is due out alongside the Q2 earnings in July.
Are you rewatching The Two Popes on Netflix? Let us know in the comments.
Rating: PG-13
