Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/December 17 to 23, 2023

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (December 17 to 23, 2023)

Prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, CAWylie, TheJoebro64, Ltbdl, Rajan51 and Krimuk2.0.

⭠ Last week's report → Next week's report

Plenty of new articles due to releases on theaters and streaming.

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Salaar: Part 1 – Ceasefire	2,384,892	Indian movies return with a double feature from Tollywood and Bollywood releasing in the same week. The first one is a serious movie from a popular director and the second one is a comedy that tackles a serious subject. While this double feature might sound familiar to something else, it has its differences with the first one being an action movie featuring Prabhas, the actor who starred in the highest-grossing film in India and being directed by Prashanth Neel, the director of the second movie in that list. The second movie features Shah Rukh Khan, the actor who has starred in the two biggest Indian films of the year so far, and is directed by Rajkumar Hirani, who has had multiple films become the biggest Indian film of all time when they were released.
2	Dunki (film)	2,221,904
3	Animal (2023 film)	2,071,420	The other big Indian film of the month continues to climb the box office charts.
4	Leave the World Behind (film)	1,373,429	Julia Roberts stars in this Netflix apocalyptic thriller about a family whose vacation ends up being crashed by a societal collapse.
5	Leonard Bernstein	1,220,127	One of the most acclaimed composers and conductors of the 20th century, Bernstein's sexuality and relationship with his wife Felicia Montealegre is the subject of #21.
6	Deaths in 2023	982,998	Starting over, we'll head back in There's a time and place to die, but this ain't it...
7	Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom	908,528	As the DC Extended Universe closes off to prepare for a reboot, its final release is the sequel to its most successful film, 2018's Aquaman. Arthur Curry is already facing the responsibilities of being King of Atlantis and raising a son, when villain Black Manta returns, and his plans of revenge on Aquaman can also elevate global warming to extinction levels, forcing Arthur to release his antagonistic half-brother Orm from prison to stop the threat. Repeating the same comedic tone - weird that a movie series that opened 10 years ago with an overtly moody Superman film ultimately closes on a man eating a cockroach! - and flashy underwater worlds resembling "Star Wars at sea" (this time there's even a version of the alien bar, complete with Martin Short as a fishy Jabba the Hutt), Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom earned some criticism exactly for feeling very familiar, and while projected to open atop the Christmas box office, it will hardly escape the underwhelming earnings that afflicted the other DC movies of the year.
8	Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon	850,068	The second part of the final season of The Crown arrived, and readers researching about its subjects were mostly interested on the queen's (#14) sister played by Lesley Manville, who had an episode dedicated to how by the late 1990s years of heavy smoking and drinking culminated in severe illness and disability, most notably three strokes, before Margaret died at 71 in 2002.
9	Rebel Moon	827,353	The newest film from Zack Snyder—wait, let me rephrase that: the first part of the newest film from Zack Snyder—was released on Netflix on December 21. Billed as Netflix's Star Wars killer, it's intended to launch a media franchise comprising sequels, games, comics, and animation... though I would be surprised if it gets very far, given that reviews have been anything but acclamatory. Will the R-rated director's cut and/or the second part be able to turn things around? Well, his last director's cut managed to elevate "total dogshit" to "alright", so... maybe?
10	Saltburn (film)	702,623	This shocking British satire involving bathtub licks and period licks released on Amazon Prime Video after a brief theatrical run.
11	Premier League	675,454	English football is reaching the season's halfway point, and frustration already showed up for Arsenal, who saw Liverpool jump ahead to take the top spot, and when taking on them at home could only get a draw to remain in second.
12	Jonathan Majors	650,089	After starting off the year well playing the antagonists of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Creed III, actor Jonathan Majors was arrested in March as girlfriend Grace Jabbari accused him of domestic violence, and the trial ended this week with Majors found guilty of one count of reckless assault. Marvel Studios fired him as a result, and it's certain the role of Kang the Conqueror will be recast (if not retired) for future movies.
13	Wonka (film)	632,891	Timothée Chalamet's latest hit has him play the twink version of Willy Wonka.
14	Elizabeth II	630,947	The protagonist of The Crown, who in the final six episodes gives her input to the ministry of Tony Blair, sees her sister (#8) and mother die, grandchildren William (whose wife narrowly missed at #27) and Harry face the difficulties of adulthood, and as the show's closing event, their father remarry in 2005, ultimately finishing on Elizabeth leaving St George's Chapel into a white light but not having a title card acknowledging how Her Majesty died last year. The series finale even features Imelda Staunton having visions of Elizabeth's younger selves played by Claire Foy and Olivia Colman.
15	Dawood Ibrahim	582,468	Rumours emerged about one of India's most infamous fugitives being poisoned and hospitalized in Pakistan, but nothing is confirmed.
16	Alan Ritchson	576,953	Last year, Prime Video released Reacher, the second time Jack Reacher was adapted, and a big difference from the movies with Tom Cruise was that the Reacher of this series resembled the enormous blonde of the books by casting Alan Ritchson, who already played superheroes (the one from #7 in Smallville and Hank Hall/Hawk in Titans) and a Ninja Turtle, and earlier this year showed up on Fast X. The second season, adapting the novel Bad Luck and Trouble, started and follows Reacher investigating how a team he assembled in the US Army's military police is being hunted down.
17	Reacher (TV series)	546,485
18	Jann Mardenborough	524,664	At age 8, this young Brit began playing the Gran Turismo video game. He took a liking to auto racing so much that, at age 19, he studied motorsport engineering at university, but he dropped out after three weeks due to the amount of math involved. He then heard about the GT Academy offering professional racing contracts with Nissan to the winners of a competition held for GT5. He beat 90,000 entrants and launched a successful racing career. The Gran Turismo film, documenting his career, released on Netflix on Christmas Day.
19	List of highest-grossing Indian films	514,527	With the release of #1 and #2, and the success of #3, it is hardly surprising that this list is here.
20	2024 PDC World Darts Championship	490,498	Ah, yes, darts, one of the most riveting sports invented since, uh, pickleball. The sport where you throw needles at a colorful board and earn points. Yes, worth holding a competition for. Fine, yes, I have a grudge against darts. I'm still plotting my revenge.
21	Maestro (2023 film)	481,435	A biopic of #5 that's not really a biopic releases on Netflix. This marks Bradley Cooper's second directorial following his 2018 hit A Star Is Born.
22	Dick Van Dyke	476,074	CBS aired Dick Van Dyke: 98 Years of Magic on the birthday of this actor who next year will complete 70 years from his first TV appearance, and showing how he's still very active, earlier in 2023 was a contestant on The Masked Singer and appeared in some episodes of Days of Our Lives.
23	Von Erich family	456,259	The tragic story of this family of professional wrestlers is dramatized in The Iron Claw, starring Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson as three brothers.
24	UFC 296	447,269	From wrestling to mixed martial arts, and this event held in Las Vegas had along with the scheduled bouts at the cage a brief altercation between two fighters in the audience!
25	Percy Jackson and the Olympians (TV series)	441,880	The Percy Jackson & the Olympians book series was first adapted by Hollywood in the form of two films in 2010 and 2013, but they didn't exactly break out at the box office. It didn't help that they received mixed reviews from both critics and audiences. However, the second attempt as a Disney+ show seems to have escaped that fate, with the first two episodes receiving generally positive reviews from both critics and audiences. Does this bode well for the other TV reboots of young adult books that have already been adapted to the big screen? (Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, Eragon, among others) It may be too soon to say.