LOS ANGELES:

The Upside Down delivered upside for Netflix in the third quarter: “Stranger Things” Season 3 was the most-watched season of the series to date, according to the streamer.

In the first four weeks of release, “Stranger Things” Season 3 was watched by 64 million member households, Netflix said in the Q3 letter to shareholders. The company previously boasted that 40.7 million accounts watched the show in the first four days of its July 4 debut, marking its biggest-ever audience for a movie or TV series in a four-day window.

What’s important to note: The data isn’t independently verifiable. Moreover, Netflix records a “view” of a series if a member account watches just one episode to at least 70% completion.

Still, according to measurement and ratings firm Nielsen, “Stranger Things 3” is the most-watched Netflix original it has analyzed over past two years – at least, over the initial four days of release. From July 4th to 7th, the show had an average minute audience of 12.8 million viewers and reached 26.4 million unique viewers in the US, Nielsen reported. Episode 1 of S3 drew an average minute audience of 19.2 million viewers over the four-day period, a 7% bump from the Season 2 premiere episode for the comparable period. There are caveats, too, with the Nielsen numbers: These are only for the US and they measure only viewing on connected TVs (excluding computers and mobile devices).

Netflix last month renewed “Stranger Things” for Season 4, and series creators and showrunners Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer signed a multiyear overall deal with the streamer to create films and television series. (RTRS)