Wikipedia:Top 25 Report

The Top 25 Report

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (December 22 to 28, 2024)

Prepared with commentary by Igordebraga and CAWylie.

The year ends with entertainment, death, and surprisingly little of the holiday spirit.

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Squid Game season 2	2,358,629	3 years later, Netflix brings back the Korean show about people down on their luck playing deadly versions of children's games. Returning are some characters - protagonist Seong Gi-hun/"456", who goes back into the games hoping to disrupt them; the games' overseer Hwang In-ho/"The Front Man", who infiltrates the games disguised as a player; and the Front Man's brother Hwang Jun-ho, who didn't die after falling off a cliff in season 1, and now seeks the island where the games are being played - and that giant doll of the Red Light, Green Light contest, which is also the only competition that remains the same to keep the viewers surprised and nervous.
2	Manmohan Singh	2,109,786	This Sikh, who was India's 13th prime minister, died at age 92 on December 26. Appointed as finance minister in 1991, amidst a severe economic crisis, Singh liberalized his country's economy. In 2004, Singh became PM, following Atal Bihari Vajpayee's resignation; Singh held the position until 2014.
3	Pushpa 2: The Rule	1,722,305	India is still mad about this Tollywood featuring Allu Arjun as a sandalwood smuggler fighting his enemies. Sequel Pushpa 3: The Rampage has already been confirmed.
4	Nosferatu (2024 film)	1,517,120	Nothing says "Christmas" like a gothic horror film set in the 1830s and released on December 25 (December 3 premiere in Berlin). And who better to welcome you into their home than the "Bird of Death" himself, Count Orlok (pictured here played by Max Schreck in the 1922 original film)? The latest remake maintains the concepts of the original, both of which are inspired by Bram Stoker's novel. Bill Skarsgård is unrecognizable as the latest Orlok iteration, who simply answers a lonely wife's plea for a guardian angel. The film has received positive reviews and, as of this writing, nearly recouped its US$50 million budget.
5	Boxing Day	1,182,615	This Report is one where we could ask "Do They Know It's Christmas?", as instead of the December 25 festivities we get the holiday of the 26th, named after "Christmas boxes" used for donations, although its main attraction are shopping sprees (and in the UK, Premier League games).
6	Deaths in 2024	1,054,406	Our obituary is a constant, and this year managed to appear in all 52 weeks even when elections in India and the United States were pushing in plenty of entries to threaten its position. Hence it's no surprise that the death list will be the top article in our upcoming Annual Report.
7	Squid Game	1,026,728	In 2021, Netflix viewership records were broken by a Korean show where people with high debts try to get money by risking their lives playing games such as Red Light Green Light, Tug of war and marbles, plus taking toffee from its mold. The cultural impact included two real competition shows, MrBeast's "$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!" and Netflix's own Squid Game: The Challenge, and a very funny Saturday Night Live musical skit (which like #1 ends with the protagonist returning to the games!).
8	Mufasa: The Lion King	996,280	Disney attracted a respected director in Barry Jenkins and Lin-Manuel Miranda doing original songs for a return to the Pride Lands, even if the idea of a Mufasa origin story seemed as unnecessary as the photorealistic remake that was widely criticized by fans but still made billions at the box office. Mufasa has some good ideas but many mistakes (such as making Timon and Pumbaa absolutely unfunny) and thus got mixed reviews and an unimpressive North American opening that couldn't defeat the other digital animal in theaters (#10), though foreign response was better and the film has already passed $300 million worldwide.
9	Justin Baldoni	970,284	Earlier this year, Baldoni directed and co-starred in the box office hit It Ends with Us, where he portrayed the abusive partner of a woman played by Blake Lively. Upon the film's release emerged the reports that Baldoni and Lively had acrimonious disputes during production, and turns out things were even uglier given Lively has filed a lawsuit accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment and causing her emotional distress, and even discovered documents revealing Baldoni and his agents ran a public relations campaign to damage Lively's reputation.
10	Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (film)	964,314	Below Mufasa on this list, but widely considered the superior movie. The power trio Sonic, Tails and Knuckles faces off against the dark counterpart Shadow and both Dr. Robotnik and his grandpa Gerald (providing the delightful sight of two Jim Carrey overacting performances at once), in a story with enough comedy, action, and emotional moments to become the highest-rated video game adaptation ever on Rotten Tomatoes. Having already topped its opening weekend and without a pandemic to slow down the intakes like its predecessors, Sonic 3 should continue running fast through the box office, and those hyped up by the mid-credits sequel hook are happy the studio already announced a fourth movie for 2027.
11	List of highest-grossing Indian films	923,251	#3 is also in third place here, having surpassed the internationally known RRR and with a chance of reaching Baahubali 2: The Conclusion. 2024 also has Kalki 2898 in 8th place and Stree 2 in 11th.
12	Baby John (film)	911,609	Not all films released at Christmas are blockbusters. Another Indian action film (see #14), this one directed by Kalees, stars Varun Dhawan (pictured) and is a remake of 2016's Theri, a much better film. John has already become a box-office bomb (Kalees's second to do so). I think more people read the article than seen the film.
13	Carry-On	798,870	So, carry on, there's a meaning to life... Sorry. In a way reminiscent of the best Christmas movie ever made, this Netflix thriller follows Taron Egerton as a TSA officer blackmailed during Christmas Eve to let terrorists board a plane while carrying nerve gas.
14	Marco (2024 film)	793,673	In keeping with Christmas tradition, India released this action thriller on December 20. Written and directed by Haneef Adeni and starring Unni Mukundan (pictured), the film has received critical acclaim and has become the highest grossing A-rated Malayalam film to date.
15	Gladiator II	708,064	Even if it was a movie no one asked for, and so expensive that even by making over $400 million it will lose money, Gladiator II was good enough to start entering the awards season, and popular among Wikipedia users to remain on this list and even enter the upcoming annual one.
16	Bob Dylan	700,529	One of the greatest singer-songwriters of the 20th century, Robert Allen Zimmerman had already inspired an unusual retelling of his life in I'm Not There, and now gets a proper biopic in A Complete Unknown, where Dylan is portrayed by Timothée Chalamet.
17	Greg Gumbel	695,994	Gumbel, brother of Bryant (#23), died from cancer at age 78 on December 27. He was a television sportscaster, mainly for CBS Sports and covering the NFL and college basketball. In 2001, he became the first African-American announcer to call play-by-play for any sports championship when CBS broadcast Super Bowl XXXV.
18	Elon Musk	673,929	Lots about this guy. He was confirmed to be the person who earned the most money in 2024, praised Germany's far right party and the weirdo ruling over Argentina, and the press calls him very powerful. But before Musk joins the government, the outgoing one has been questioning him regarding national security.
19	Red One (film)	638,284	The other reminder that it was Christmas week, an action comedy on Prime Video with J.K. Simmons as a buff Santa that ends up kidnapped by the witch Grýla (Kiernan Shipka), forcing his head of security played by Dwayne Johnson and a hacker played by Chris Evans to join forces to rescue St. Nick (codenamed "Red One" by the people running the operations on the North Pole).
20	The Six Triple Eight	637,034	This Netflix film, released on December 20 and directed by Tyler Perry, focuses on the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, an all-Black, all-female mail group in the Women's Army Corps during World War 2. The film has received mixed reviews, with most respectively divisive over its leading actress, Kerry Washington, and her portrayal of commanding officer Charity Adams Earley.
21	Rickey Henderson	630,219	Baseball's "Man of Steal" was born on Christmas Day 1958 and died five days before his 66th birthday. He debuted in 1979 and retired in 2003, taking countless records with him. If they decided to attach a person's name to the Baseball Hall of Fame, his should precede it.
22	Olivia Hussey	863,946	This Argentine-born British actress was discovered in her late-teenage years by Franco Zeffirelli and beat out 500 other actresses to play the lead in his Romeo and Juliet film. Both she and her young co-star, Leonard Whiting, won newcomer awards. Hussey went on to have a successful stage, screen, and voice acting career, despite filing a lawsuit with Whiting against Paramount Pictures in 2022 for exploitation in Romeo (the case was dismissed). In 2008, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and battled the disease in various forms until her death at age 73 on December 27.
23	Bryant Gumbel	589,530	The brother of #17 also works in journalism and sports.
24	Wicked (2024 film)	583,566	The Wicked Witch of the West is reimagined as a vilified woman in this film adaptation of a Broadway phenomenon (itself based on a book), which has made over $600 million worldwide and during Christmas day received "sing-along" screenings.
25	Blake Lively	579,466	As told in #9, back when It Ends with Us was released, star Blake Lively was targeted online for the reports that she had conflicts with director and co-star Justin Baldoni, along with supposedly downplaying domestic violence, the film's theme, and awkward old interviews repurposed as evidence of bullying behaviour. Now a lawsuit shows Baldoni did much to earn Lively's disapproval, with inappropriate comments and boundary violations - including forcing her to film a childbirth scene naked from the chest down, while not having a closed set and featuring a close friend of Baldoni as the OBGYN. Baldoni has countersued claiming much is false, but the evidence is not helping.

Exclusions

This list excludes the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish.