DreamWorks’ most meme-worthy movie just arrived Netflix‘s leaderboards, establishing themselves as an ever-popular viewing option for audiences. Thanks to releases like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and The series How to train your dragonDreamWorks Animation is one of the best-known animation studios of all time, and has continually confirmed this status with a wide variety of hit movies.
Recent years have brought us newer but still critically and financially viable releases like The Bad Guys movies, Trolls movies and 2024’s The wild robotwhich has won a wide variety of awards since its release back in September of that year. Given this level of fame, perhaps inevitably there are more DreamWorks movies is also the source of many memes, with the Shrek series having a wide variety of the most famous and infamous examples of this, respectively.
That said, there is one DreamWorks film that has survived the test of time in pop culture with, and arguably because of, the memes surrounding it even more so — to the point that the film, and its opening lines in particular, are considered synonymous with the world of internet comedy. Interestingly, it seems that may have played a role in the film having a major streaming resurgence in recent history.
Bee Movie just hit Netflix’s weekly most watched movie list
Despite Bee movie after releasing almost twenty years ago now, the movie has been given another life in the streaming world, becoming one of June 2026’s most watched movies on Netflix’s weekly records.
Between June 8 and June 14 Bee movie amassed 2,500,000 views and gained a diverse 3,800,000 hours of watch time from those views, making it the 10th most-watched English-language film on the platform during that period. That’s no small feat for any film, let alone one that debuted years ago.
However, this also makes a lot of sense given Bee movies unusual cultural relevance today, as the film has been one of the DreamWorks films that has been the source of the most memes in the years following its release. With the film’s unusual premise centering on the life of a bee who tries to sue humanity for taking the bikin’s honey – and who begins a romance with a human woman – it’s perhaps no surprise that Bee movie has remained well-known throughout time in a way because of its fascinating stories.
Why Bee Movie is still popular nearly two decades later
Bee movie has a double kind of appeal. On the one hand, it works like a completely conventional DreamWorks animated film, with some interesting action scenes, some entertaining jokes, and characters that are compelling enough to make you want to see what happens to them in the long run.
On the other side of things, the surreal and unique premise of Bee movie — and the vast array of memes created around the film, its script, and the parts of the film that are weirdest to watch out of context — have added a different kind of reason to watch the film that remains to this day. In the end, it’s hard to watch clips of a man complaining that a bee stole his girlfriend and not be at least a little intrigued, and it probably helped Bee movieNetflix’s success, at least in part.
As such Bee movie strikes Netflix‘s charts is not entirely surprising, although it is certainly all the more interesting at a time when newer films such as KPop Demon Hunters and The booty are generally expected to be the platform’s animated heavy hitters.
