Once again, GameSpot’s parent company Fandom has released its rankings of the hottest pop culture franchises, and Star Wars topped the list for 2023.
An annual poll quizzes the Fandom’s 350 million monthly users as to what gets them going, using what it calls a Franchise Factor Score, as well as data culled from a global study called Inside Fandom.
The survey ranks each franchise based on scores for characteristics like “worldbuilding,” ratings for its releases, how fierce each IP’s fanbases are and cultural relevance. With that in mind, Star Wars came out on top.
In second place was another Disney-owned property, Marvel, despite recent slips at the box office and with a lukewarm reception to its small-screen properties like Secret Invasion.
A surprising third place went to One Piece, the beloved manga that recently became a Netflix phenomenon.
The Elder Scrolls video game series landed in fourth place, and Harry Potter rounded out the top five.
Barbie ranked in sixth place — a showing no doubt goosed by the brand having the biggest movie of the year — while seventh place belonged to a show with a very different demographic: the neo-Western Yellowstone.
In fact, Kevin Costner‘s Paramount Network series beat out HBO’s hit video game adaptation The Last of Us, which placed eighth; the video game franchise Fallout, which landed at #9; and Disney as a whole in 10th.
Disney is the parent company of ABC News.
Survey questions, methodology and results have not been verified or endorsed by ABC News or The Walt Disney Company.
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