Italy’s May 2026 top 10 movies across Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ showed three platforms pulling their reach from very different places.
Summary:
- Amazon’s top 10 was the most current of the three platforms: nine of the ten titles were 2025 or 2026 releases, heavily driven by dramatic features and local comedy like Non è un paese per single.
- Disney+’s top 10 split between catalogue comedy and animation: seven of the ten titles came from its older catalog, creating an unbroken wall of animation dominated by Pixar and classic Disney features.
- Netflix’s chart was shaped by a single title: In May 2026, Buen Camino, which had already broken Italy’s domestic box office record before arriving on the platform, drew nearly three times the audience of any other title on the leaderboard.
1. Inside the Netflix Top 10
One title did most of the heavy lifting on Netflix’s Italian chart in May 2026. Buen Camino, the Checco Zalone comedy that had already broken Italy’s domestic box office record before arriving on the platform, absolutely dominated the market reaching 3.7M accounts, drawing nearly three times the audience of any other title on the leaderboard.
The rest of the chart split evenly between major international hits like Apex (1.3M), Ladies First (1.2M), Remarkably Bright Creatures (1.1M), and Gladiator II (1.0M), alongside homegrown Italian dramas such as Per te (0.8M) and La grazia (0.7M). Rounding out the bottom of the list, Swapped pulled in 0.7M. Finally, two older catalog titles proved they can still command an audience years after release: Anna (0.5M) made a strong splash as a brand-new addition to the platform's catalog, while Those Who Wish Me Dead (0.5M) saw a major resurgence as it returned to Netflix for the first time since May 2023.
2. Inside the Prime Video Top 10
The platform's metrics from May 2026 reveal a clear shift: while global action assets matter, homegrown storytelling and local comedy are the true audience drivers. The 2026 comedy Non è un paese per single dominates the top spot reaching a commanding 0.9M unique accounts. It established a significant lead over Prime's major global franchise anchor, Jack Ryan: Ghost War, which secured second place at 0.7M.
Directly below them sits a highly competitive middle tier of dramatic features. The localized 2026 drama Le cose non dette brought in a strong reach of 0.6M viewers, running neck-and-neck with the 2025 drama Stolen Girl (0.6M). From there, the chart transitions into a tight long-tail of thrillers and comedies all holding steady at 0.3M to 0.4M apiece including Cleaner, Crime 101, and the local catalog comedy Una famiglia sottosopra.
3. Inside the Disney+ Top 10
7 of the top 10 titles convert entirely into an unbroken wall of animation, heavily dominated by Pixar and classic Disney features. Led by Zootopia 2 (0.2M) and Cars (0.2M), the bottom of the chart is populated entirely by major animated titles including Encanto, Tangled, Frozen, Luca, and Coco, all holding steady at 0.1M unique accounts.
While competing platforms rely on a mix of live-action genres, the enduring presence of these specific titles highlights that Disney’s massive animation vault remains the core engine keeping the platform on Italian leaderboards.
4. Recency versus one runaway title
The contrast in Italy this May comes down to how each platform's leaderboard is distributed between new releases and legacy content. Amazon Prime Video’s chart features the most current slate, with six of its top ten slots claimed by 2026 releases, heavily driven by dramatic features. Disney+ sits at the opposite end of the spectrum, with seven of its top ten titles coming from its older catalog, evenly split between comedy and animation.
5. What this means for tracking a title’s launch in Italy
Nine of the ten titles in Amazon's Italian top 10 were 2025 or 2026 releases. Disney+’s top 10 carried three. Netflix’s chart didn’t split along a release-year line at all: one 2025 comedy drastically outpaced every other individual title on the platform’s chart. A single domestic comedy outweighed an entire platform’s slate of new international titles in Italy this May. A different platform’s chart barely moved past its comedy and animation back catalogue. Neither pattern predicts June, but each was what actually carried that platform’s Italian chart in May.
"Beyond individual title performance, this data highlights the power of theatrical-to-streaming synergy in Italy. The staggering 3.7M reach for record-breaking box-office hit 'Buen Camino' shows that the Italian cinema-to-streaming pipeline is healthier than ever. Far from cannibalising streaming performance, a massive cinema run serves as the ultimate campaign for a film’s SVOD release, driving scale that platform-exclusive titles rarely match." - Elena Mozzato, Senior Data Analyst.
Want to see how a specific title’s Italian streaming performance compares against catalogue titles on the same platform, or how this composition looks in another market? Get in touch and we can pull the full title-level breakdown. Next in the series: Spain’s top 10, coming soon. For more on what The Monthly Podium is and how it works, see the series launch piece: The Monthly Podium: UK’s top 10 movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+, May 2026
Source: Digital i. Interval: May 2026, Netflix/Amazon Prime Video/Disney+ subscriber accounts, Italy.
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