‘Mulan,’ ‘Harry Potter’: The most-talked about movies in the world right now

Yifei Liu as Mulan. Image: Stephen Tilley/Disney via AFP Relaxnews

Will moviegoing survive the coronavirus pandemic?

While cinemas across Europe are downing shutters again in response to a spike in COVID-19 infections, industry professionals are wondering if audiences still have an appetite for movies. It definitely seems like it, according to a new AtlasVPN report that analyzes the most popular films in the world.

At the top of the list is “Mulan,” the $200 million live-action remake of Disney’s much-loved 1998 animated film. Although the movie faced global backlash over a filming location, it is the movie of choice for cinephiles in 61% of countries worldwide analyzed in the AtlasVPN research.

The Disney remake tops the charts in 53 out of 87 countries across Europe, Oceania and Africa as well as North and South America. Surprisingly, “Mulan” is also trending in France, although it will only be available to French users of Disney’s streaming platform from Dec. 4.

Coming in second on the list is the first film of the “Harry Potter” franchise, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” The 2001 blockbuster is the most popular movie in 28 countries across the world, including Argentina, Denmark, Greece, Thailand and Vietnam.

Indians are favoring the newly-released Hindi romantic comedy, “Ginny Weds Sunny,” while Israelis are most interested in Quentin Tarantino’s academy-award winning “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Japanese cinephiles are searching the web for Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame,” whereas Estonians are turning to the 1994 classic “Pulp Fiction.”

Researchers of AtlasVPN compiled a list of the top 100 of the most popular movies according to IMDB and cross-referenced them with Google Trends data from October of 2020. Countries where data was unavailable or insufficient were excluded from the list, while any region with its own specific data in Google Trends was treated as a separate country. NVG

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