Bridgerton is now Netflix’s most-watched original series ever

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Netflix has shared that its mega-popular period drama Bridgerton is officially its most-watched original series.

The streaming service originally projected that 63 million accounts would tune into the Shonda Rhimes-produced show over its first 28 days of being out in the world. Turns out, Netflix says that actually, 82 million member accounts have viewed the show in that time span (the company counts a "view" as someone watching at least two minutes of a series or film).

Bridgerton has now surpassed the last record-breaking programme on Netflix, with The Witcher having amassed 76 million views in its first 28 days after release.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, initial projections were off because the series' immense popularity had surpassed even Netflix's expectations.

The all-time high for any Netflix original, per its reports, is for the action movie Extraction, which earned 99 million member account views within the first 28 days of release.

During a visit to Tamron Hall's talk show on Monday (25 January), Bridgerton author Julia Quinn revealed that Shonda Rhimes became interested in adapting her books for TV after "stumbling” upon them while on holiday.

“The way I understand it, Shonda ran out of books to read on vacation and somehow stumbled on one of mine,” Quinn said. “It’s crazy to think that my life is forever changed because Shonda didn't bring enough reading material on vacation, but that’s honestly what happened.”

In a December interview with Oprah Magazine, Quinn revealed that she wasn't even thinking about optioning the books for TV when she heard that Rhimes was interested.

“It was really out of nowhere,” she said. “I would talk to people later and they’d ask, ‘How did you sell your books to Hollywood?’ I would say, ‘I didn’t.’ They just came to me. Nobody in Hollywood was adapting books like this, so it didn’t even occur to me to try to sell them.”