As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread and large public events are being canceled out of caution, many people are staying inside to avoid the possibility of catching COVID-19. And while those people are trying to *stay away* from the outbreak, those who are Netflix subscribers are interested in *watching* an outbreak.
As of Saturday, the 1995 medical-disaster film “Outbreak” is the ninth most-popular overall title on Netflix in the U.S., according to the streaming service’s daily Top 10 list. The flick, based on Richard Preston’s nonfiction book “The Hot Zone,” comes in at No. 5 on the platform’s rankings of today’s Top 10 movies.
Starring Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, Cuba Gooding Jr., Kevin Spacey, Donald Sutherland and Patrick Dempsey, “Outbreak” tells the story of the spread of a fictional Ebola-like virus in Zaire and the fictional small town Cedar Creek, California, due to a monkey that is host to the disease.
Netflix users’ focus on pandemic-centric programming continues on the TV side, with docuseries “Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak” currently sitting at No. 9 on the streaming service’s most-popular shows list.
While this post is mainly about Netflix, here’s where we’d like to note that “Contagion” is listed as one of the most popular movies in the iTunes Store today. So the correlation between the spread of COVID-19 and people’s streaming choices doesn’t seem to be limited to just Netflix subscribers.
See Netflix’s Top 10 lists for overall titles, TV shows and movies below. Remember, these are the most-popular in the U.S. as of Saturday.
Overall
1. On My Block
2. Spenser Confidential
3. Lost Girls
4. Love Is Blind
5. The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez
6. The Angry Birds 2 Movie
7. Elite
8. Space Jam
9. Outbreak
10. Dirty Money
TV Shows
1. On My Block
2. Love Is Blind
3. The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez
4. Elite
5. Dirty Money
6. Paradise PD
7. Altered Carbon
8. The Office
9. Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak
10. Locke & Key
Movies
1. Spenser Confidential
2. Lost Girls
3. The Angry Birds 2 Movie
4. Space Jam
5. Outbreak
6. Freaks
7. Kung Fu Panda 2
8. Go Karts
9. Life as We Know It
10. Pokemon: Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution