Miles Morales Officially Dethrones Every Live-Action Spider-Man in Total Streaming Minutes

Spider-Man has always been Marvel’s most reliably bankable franchise, but new streaming data is complicating the long-held assumption that live-action interpretations of the wall-crawler dominate audience attention. With “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” continuing its record-breaking theatrical run, Nielsen has released fresh viewership figures that put the franchise’s entire history into perspective, and the results favor an unexpected corner of the Spider-Man universe.

That corner belongs to Miles Morales, the Brooklyn teenager voiced by Shameik Moore across Sony’s Oscar-winning “Spider-Verse” animated films. According to Nielsen’s own reporting, Miles Morales now stands as the most-watched Spider-Man in America based on total streaming and TV minutes, despite having appeared in just two feature films compared to the multiple entries carried by his live-action counterparts.

The numbers behind that ranking are striking. Nielsen data covering January 2023 through early July 2026 shows Miles Morales’ two films, “Into the Spider-Verse” and “Across the Spider-Verse,” have accumulated 12.3 billion minutes viewed across American households, ahead of Tom Holland’s three-film total of 10.8 billion minutes, Tobey Maguire’s trilogy at 8.6 billion minutes, and Andrew Garfield’s two films trailing at 6.7 billion minutes.

That gap becomes even more pronounced when broken down on a per-film basis. According to Nielsen’s own analysis, Miles averages more than 6 billion minutes per movie, roughly double the viewership any single live-action Spider-Man film has managed to generate, despite the character having only existed in Marvel Comics since 2011, compared to Peter Parker’s franchise roots dating back to 1962.

Nielsen attributes much of that gap to the format itself, noting that animation tends to foster significantly higher rewatchability, particularly among children who are more likely to revisit the same film repeatedly compared to typical live-action viewing habits. That rewatch factor helps explain how a character with fewer films could still out-total franchises with three times as many theatrical entries behind them.

The scale of Spider-Man’s overall streaming footprint is massive regardless of which version leads the pack. According to Media Play News’ coverage of the Nielsen data, American viewers have collectively watched more than 121 billion minutes of Spider-Man movies and television series combined since January 2023, spanning every iteration of the character across film and TV.

Animated content extends its dominance even further once television series enter the equation. Nielsen reported that “Spidey and His Amazing Friends,” the preschool-oriented animated series featuring both Peter and Miles, has logged an astonishing 73.7 billion minutes viewed, compared to 38.2 billion minutes combined across all ten live-action Spider-Man feature films, underscoring just how much episodic content designed for repeat viewing can outpace even the most successful theatrical franchises.

That momentum has continued building into 2026 specifically, with “Into the Spider-Verse” alone logging nearly 2 billion minutes in the first half of the year as the film reached wider streaming availability during what’s already shaping up as a banner year for the broader franchise. That timing coincides directly with “Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s” historic theatrical run, which has driven renewed interest across the entire Spider-Man catalog on streaming platforms.

For a franchise that’s spanned more than two decades of live-action reboots, recastings, and multiverse crossovers, having an animated interpretation quietly claim the crown for total audience engagement offers a genuinely surprising twist to Spider-Man’s long cinematic history.

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