Bible movies on Netflix: the first-half-of-2024 viewership stats

For the first time since Netflix started releasing its semi-annual viewership data, the top Bible movie and the top Bible TV series were both about Moses.

Previous stats: Jan-Jun 2023 | Jul-Dec 2023

Christian Bale as Moses in Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) and Avi Azulay as Moses in Testament: The Story of Moses (2024).

Time for another Netflix “data dump”.

Every six months or so, Netflix releases a spreadsheet listing all the films and TV shows that were watched on their platform at least 100,000 times in a six-month period—and every time they release one of these spreadsheets, I scan it for all the Bible-movie titles I can think of to see which ones ranked the highest.

Last week’s spreadsheet—covering January to June 2024—was the third such list that Netflix has released. It features over 6,800 TV seasons (each season of a series is counted separately) and over 9,300 movies. And for the first time ever, the top Bible movie and the top Bible TV show were both based on the story of Moses:

• The top Bible movie was 2014’s Exodus: Gods and Kings, which hadn’t appeared at all on the previous lists and appears to have been added to Netflix (in some countries) in January, when it briefly popped up in the weekly global top ten.

  • Prior to this, the top Bible movies were 2014’s Noah (in January-June 2023) and 2017’s animated Nativity film The Star (in July-December 2023).

• The top Bible TV show was Testament: The Story of Moses, a three-part docu-series that premiered on March 27, just a few weeks before Passover.

  • Prior to this, the top Bible series was The Chosen (in both halves of 2023).

With one exception, almost all of the Bible-themed films and TV shows from the previous list are still on the new list, and they are joined this time by newcomers like Journey to Bethlehem and The Book of Clarence, both of which finished their theatrical runs and went to streaming during the six-month period covered by this list.¹

So, once again, I have rounded up all the relevant films and shows I could find and have listed them below, noting how their numbers have evolved over the course of the three “data dumps” released so far.² As before, I compiled this list by looking for specific high-profile titles—including every title on the Bible-movie box-office list that I’ve used before—and then by searching for keywords like “gospel”, etc.