'War Of The Worlds Meets Independence Day' Series Is One of Netflix's Biggest Sci-Fi Hits Of All Time

Published Oct 13, 2026, 1:30 PM EDT

Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020.

One Netflix series that mixes War Of The Worlds with Independence Day became one of the streaming service's most watched sci-fi shows to date when the show’s first season arrived back in 2024. Since the streaming wars began back in the mid 2010s, every service has tried to dominate the sci-fi genre as well as the fantasy genre.

While there are plenty of major shows in almost every genre, these two high-concept spaces tend to command the biggest budgets and the most hype. From ambitious superhero shows like Prime Video’s Spider-Noir and The Boys to dystopian efforts like Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale or Apple TV’s Silo, there is no shortage of exciting subgenres for sci-fi shows to explore, and no end to their ambitions as streaming show budgets increase with every passing year.

Within this highly competitive, rapidly evolving ecosystem, even a leading streaming service like Netflix needs to offer viewers something truly impressive to stand out in the sci-fi genre. Fortunately, that’s exactly what Netflix managed to provide with 2023’s 3 Body Problem. Based on Chinese novelist Liu Cixin’s sci-fi novel trilogy Remembrance of Earth's Past, the groundbreaking sci-fi series 3 Body Problem follows a diverse group of international characters across time and space as they react to an extraterrestrial’s first contact.

3 Body Problem Is One of Netflix's Biggest Sci-Fi Shows Yet

Image courtesy of MovieStillsDb

With its academic protagonists and global scale, 3 Body Problem immediately calls to mind director Roland Emmerich’s epic 1996 alien invasion disaster movie Independence Day. Indeed, the show does share the same ambitious scope as that blockbuster, as well as taking influence from the influential genre classic War Of The Worlds. However, 3 Body Problem is also a more cerebral sort of sci-fi epic, wherein ideas and complex concepts earn as much screen time as scenes of destruction and chaos.

Luckily for Netflix, who invested a lot of money into the dense, daring show, 3 Body Problem's thoughtful take on alien invasion resonated with viewers. According to Netflix's What We Watched report (via FlixPatrol), 3 Body Problem season 1 was the streaming service’s most-watched sci-fi series for the year of its release, with over 536,000,000 hours streamed. This data does come with a few addendums, but none that take away from this astounding achievement.

For one thing, Netflix's What We Watched report only began to be published in 2023. As such, any reliably sourced references to “Netflix history” will typically focus on viewing patterns from 2023 onward, since Netflix never shared watch time data before that. Furthermore, it is admittedly worth noting that this analysis does label the historic Netflix hit Stranger Things as a thriller, rather than a sci-fi show, so the data might be different if that categorization was changed.

3 Body Problem Redeems Netflix's Mixed Track Record Of High-Concept Sci-Fi Shows

via MovieStillsDB

That said, these are comparatively minor quibbles, since the numbers don’t lie no matter how they are arranged. 536,000,000 watch hours would be an astounding figure for any series, but it is truly incredible considering how dense and impenetrable an adaptation of the Remembrance of Earth's Past books could have been. While deservedly beloved by critics, the trilogy is also incredibly complex and tough to translate to the screen as a result.

Meanwhile, Netflix’s infamously swift cancellation of Altered Carbon and Sense8 proves that the streaming service has a history of green lighting daring ambitious sci-fi shows with complicated concepts, only to cancel them before they can get going in earnest. This fate could easily have befallen 3 Body Problem.

However, the show’s historically huge viewership instead led Netflix to renew 3 Body Problem for two more seasons, ensuring the series will now be guaranteed enough screen time to tell the entire trilogy’s story on screen. Thus, it is fair to say that Netflix learned the right lesson from the huge ratings success of 3 Body Problem.

Sources: Netflix's What We Watched report (via FlixPatrol)