Netflix Originals 2017: Data Reveals The Most Hyped Up Returning Shows

Netflix is pumping out Originals shows faster than Donald Trump can top up his tan, but is this relentless production efforts paying off?

The company is known to keep viewing figures fairly close to its chest, but there are other ways of working out how popular a show is, from noticing that it’s been renewed for 90 episodes to measuring how excited people are for the seasons and their sequels using social listening.

We’ve previously examined hype surrounding House of Cards and Black Mirror but this week the React team decided to take a look at which Netflix Originals were expected to return in 2017 and how excited the people of Twitter were to receive them.

There’s certainly an appetite.

I've finished @BoJackHorseman . I need season 4 now @netflix

— Dylan Hager (@dhagerj15) January 24, 2017

Okay it's been 2017 for a while now where is Stranger Things season 2????

— Stranger Things (@ST_Posts) January 25, 2017

Finding the most hyped up Netflix Originals 2017

What counts as a Netflix Original is a little up for debate.

Netflix has multiple reasons for classing something as Netflix Original and the nuances are a little complicated. CNET has the most eloquent summary we found: “Basically, if it’s branded as Original, Netflix paid a lot of money so you can’t watch it anywhere else.”

We begun with a list, provided by MoviePilot.Com in the form of their article “New & Returning Netflix Original Series (In 2017 And Beyond!)“. It’s a hefty list, with plenty of previously unseen Netflix Originals coming this year, so we decided to limit our search to returning Netflix Originals (21 in total).

Then we set up queries for each show and the upcoming season to work out how much hype was being generated around them.

Trailers making a splash

A good way to track how excited people are for a new season is to look at their reaction to the trailer.

Check out the reaction to the latest House of Cards teaser:

It is pretty menacing.

We make the terror. pic.twitter.com/VpChwGOSMj

— House of Cards (@HouseofCards) January 20, 2017

However, since we only measured mentions between 1 December and 25th January, it gives shows that released trailers in that date range a fairly unfair advantage when it comes to saying which has the most hype.

To combat this, we tagged any mentions of “trailer” or “teaser” (and variations on those words) and removed tweets including them from our final tally.

Returning Netflix Originals 2017

So, with our data free from trailer/teaser-specific mentions, we had our final list.

The most tweeted about Netflix Original series’ coming in 2017 are Sense8 season two, House of Cards season five and Stranger Things season two.

Aided, of course, by a few particularly popular tweets:

When you realize you have to wait 6 more months for sense8 season 2: pic.twitter.com/w3inyxPh3P

— sense8 (@sense8pics) December 3, 2016

https://twitter.com/CGBPosts/status/818515163406041088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

House of Cards season five mentions were peppered with references to the new President (748 of the non-trailer mentions, to be exact).

Who else is counting down the days to House of Cards Season 5? Only hope Trump doesn't overshadow Underwood. #TVFightsLive pic.twitter.com/MLF9VaWnjk

— Hamza Joozer (@HamzaJoozer) January 25, 2017

Interestingly, we found that the six top-mentioned upcoming seasons (minus trailers) were mostly discussed by female-categorized tweeters, with just Narcos and House of Cards attracting more male tweeters.

It remains to be seen who has better taste.

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