‘Dahmer’ Is Netflix’s Second Most Popular Show Ever: Ryan Murphy Finally Closes $300 Million Deal
Viewers obviously have macabre taste.
“Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” is now the second most popular show on Netflix.
Platform statistics for the week of October 3-9 showed that the drama, starring Evan Peters as notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, collected 205.33 million hours of viewing time worldwide. This brings its total viewing time to 701.37 million hours since its September 21 premiere.
That pushed it even past Shonda Rhimes’ hit “Bridgerton” (Season 2 had 656.26 million hours in its first month).
This officially makes “Dahmer” the second most-watched English-language show in Netflix history behind “Stranger Things” season 4, which took the top spot with 1.35 billion hours watched.
Ryan Murphy finally scored a win for Netflix — and all it took was an infamous serial killer to do it.
Murphy’s original deal with Netflix was an impressive $300 million over five years, signed in 2018. Since then, he doesn’t seem to have given much to the platform. It ran shows like Hollywood, The Politician, Halston and Ratched, but they all got mixed reviews and none of them set the world on fire. The Politician reportedly pulled in a paltry 2.3 percent of Netflix viewers.
Murphy continued to produce his existing Fox projects, such as “Feud,” “9-1-1,” “Pose” and “American Crime Story,” all of which penetrated the zeitgeist more than “The Politician” and ” Halston”.
But despite being a ratings hit — and a necessary win for Murphy — “Dahmer” was not without controversy and criticism.
The families of Dahmer’s victims took to social media to express their dismay that this show is “re-traumatizing over and over again and for what?”
There’s also a troubling trend of fans hot on Dahmer — or at least they’re posting thirsty tweets, like “Jeffrey Dahmers photo definitely gives something I didn’t know or thought it would give.” Twitter viewers have also lost it over Dahmer’s apparent Halloween costumes.
“Dahmer” is currently streaming on Netflix.