Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan, Shahid Kapoor-Led Farzi Lead IMDb’s Most Popular Indian Movies and Web Series Rankings

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Halfway into the year, IMDb has revealed a list of the 10 most popular Indian movies and TV series — so far — both of which are led by the biggest stars in Bollywood. On the film side, we’ve got the Shah Rukh Khan-led espionage thriller Pathaan, which marked the actor’s return to mainstream filming after four years. Bear in mind, this list is created using page views on IMDb as a metric and is, therefore, not an indicator of its quality. IMDb does, of course, also maintain a crowd-sourced rating system which puts a score on the quality of films, but this can quite easily be gamed by audiences.

Raj and DK’s Farzi, which leads the pack among the most popular TV series of 2023 in India, is a good example of this. Earlier this week, its lead Shahid Kapoor tweeted out an infographic, where [Farzi(https://www.gadgets360.com/tags/farzi) ranked second among the ‘Top-rated TV Series of 2023′ (worldwide) — right below HBO’s The Last of Us — adding that such a high ranking indicates a demand for a second season. What he didn’t take into consideration is the number of voters, which Farzi significantly lacks. The show earned an 8.4-star rating from a mere 35,000 voters/ viewers, while The Last of Us emerged on top with a score of 8.8/10, collected from 434,000 voters. It can, therefore, be assumed that titles with more votes have more reliable ratings.

Still, it does make sense for Farzi to be ranked as the most popular show in India (based on page views as a metric), which followed a rags-to-riches story of a small-time con artist who learns to make counterfeit money. What follows next is a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase between him and a fiery, unorthodox task force officer Michael Vedanayagam (Vijay Sethupathi), as the story veers into bigger threats involving a local gangster and some greedy accomplices who are willing to bend over at the sight of money. Its creators Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K. responded to Kapoor’s tweet, expressing their desire for a second chapter as well.

“It’s extremely heartening to learn that Pathaan is first on the list by IMDb. To see the amount of love that Pathaan has received is amazing, and whenever any work gets placed first, then the thing to do is to work twice as hard on the next one to thank everyone for this recognition,” Pathaan’s lead Khan said in a prepared statement. “Most importantly, I would like to thank the team of Pathaan and the audiences across the globe for making this happen!” The film was followed closely by Salman Khan’s Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan and The Kerala Story, which was bound to get some attention due to the political sentiment surrounding it. What’s interesting is that there wasn’t much distinction in IMDb traffic, regardless of whether a film was released in theatres or digitally.

Streaming originals such as Bloody Daddy (JioCinema) and Netflix’s Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga and Mission Majnu managed to secure spots among the top 10. Not all of them are from Bollywood, however; two Tamil films Varisu and Ponniyin Selvan: Part Two complete the list in positions 9 and 10, respectively.

IMDb’s press release notes that Indian audiences gravitated toward crime drama series during the first half of the year, with the sub-genre taking up eight spots out of the total 10. Standouts include Rana Naidu, Asur 2: Rise of the Dark Side, and Saas, Bahu Aur Flamingo. The exceptions are the period drama Taj: Divided by Blood and Rocket Boys, the latter of which saw two visionaries Dr. Vikram Sarabhai (Ishwak Singh) and Dr. Homi J. Bhabha (Jim Sarbh) competing to launch their projects during India’s formative years in the field of science.