As theWP:TOP25 has been grinding ahead at a pace slightly faster than the number ofSignpost issues, we have two charts in this Report, for the weeks of April 3–9 and April 10–16. Setting aside the now-permanent presence ofDonald Trump, sports and movies have been a central theme.Wrestlemania's annual event topped the chart for the week of April 3–9, though the release of thePanama Papers (#2) was thehard news story of the week.Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was knocked out of the top spot into #3, where it parked for both weekly charts. For April 10–16,Kobe Bryant's retirement led the news, and English golferDanny Willett'sMaster's win hit #4, but films were responsible for filling up six of the top 10 slots.
For the full top-25 lists (and our archives back to January 2013), seeWP:TOP25. Seethis section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles every week, seehere.
For the week of April 3–9, 2016, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of themost viewed pages, were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WrestleMania 32 | 1,895,563 | Up from #7 last week.WWE's annualpay-per-view pantomime took place on April 3, 2016 (the first day of this week's chart), atAT&T Stadium inArlington, Texas, featuringRoman Reigns (pictured), who defeatedTriple H.Charlotte won theWomen's Championship. | ||
| 2 | Panama Papers | 1,644,672 | ThePanama Papers are a leaked set of 11.5 million confidential documents that provide detailed information about more than 214,000offshore companies listed by thePanamanian corporate service providerMossack Fonseca, including the identities of shareholders and directors of the companies. The first news reports based on the papers went public on April 3. The Prime Minister of Iceland,Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson (pictured), was among those exposed in the papers and announced his resignation on April 5. | ||
| 3 | Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice | 1,387,901 | The number of views are halved from last week, but still another strong showing after two weeks at #1.Warner Bros might have cause to breathe again for the first time in three years, as their tent-pole gamble and hopes for an entire franchise have, it seems, paid off. Maybe. With $783M earned worldwide up to April 10, the official founding stone forDC's cinematic universe has gone down a storm, with the studio's highest-ever domestic opening weekend. Having cost an estimated $400M to produce and market, this movie will have to make $800M worldwide just to break even, which it appears it will do. | ||
| 4 | Donald Trump | 1,021,206 | You'll have to applaud Donald Trump, because I really can't recall the last time he wasn't on this chart. His article was the 17th-most-viewed in 2015, with over 14M views, and he has already more than doubled that in 2016. | ||
| 5 | Merle Haggard | 991,468 | The Americanoutlaw country singer and songwriter died on his 79th birthday on April 6 at his ranch in Northern California. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, he had 38 number one hits on the US country charts and was awarded aKennedy Center Honor for lifetime achievement in 2010. | ||
| 5 | Rogue One | 979,685 | ThisStar Wars-universe movie, not part of the main series, will be released on December 16, 2016. The release of ateaser trailer on April 7 successfully propelled this article into the chart for the first time. (It almost made the Top 25 inDecember 2015 during the peak of theStar Wars: The Force Awakens (#21) frenzy.)Felicity Jones (pictured) will star in the film. | ||
| 7 | List of people named in the Panama Papers | 926,251 | See #2. Wikipedia can be very good at preparing detailed articles like this, attempting to usefully organize massive amounts of worldwide press reporting. Argentine PresidentMauricio Macri (pictured) is the first headshot of many in this article at the moment. | ||
| 8 | Ravi Shankar | 751,268 | The famous Indian musician died in December 2012, but a partial-world reachGoogle Doodlecelebrated his 96th birthday on April 7. | ||
| 9 | 1896 Summer Olympics | 722,779 | After a hiatus of fifteen-hundred years, the Olympics were restarted in 1896; the games began on April 6, 1896, 120 years ago. A wide-reachGoogle Doodle wasthere to remind us of this. | ||
| 10 | Deaths in 2016 | 648,626 | The annual list of deaths has always been a fairly consistent visitor to this list, and often in the Top 10, averaging about 600,000 views a week at this point. |
For the week of April 10–16, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined fromWMF's TopViews, were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kobe Bryant | 1,393,551 | Well he said he would do it, and now he's done it. The career-longLA Laker and 18-timeNBA All-Star played his last professional game on April 13, outscoring the entire opposing team in the fourth quarter. And that despite a long series of injuries that led him to make the call to finally retire. Despite being best-known outside the sport for a damagingsexual assault allegation in 2003, he appears to have gone out on a high with fans, with viewer numbers double those of his last appearance on this list, when he made his announcement in November. | ||
| 2 | The Jungle Book (2016 film) | 1,036,211 | This American film based onRudyard Kipling'sThe Jungle Book, previously adapted to screen in a1967 animated film, had its world premiere on April 4. It was released in 15 countries on April 8, and debuted in the US on April 15 to a stellar $103M weekend and rapturous reviews (the film currently has a 94%RT rating). Despite being described as a "live-action reboot", the film is really more of a CGI cartoon, with nearly everything onscreen composed of computer graphics, except for the lead child actorNeel Sethi. | ||
| 3 | Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice | 890,582 | By any measure, except perhaps, its own,Warner Bros's attempt to counter theMarvel Cinematic Universe has been a success. It has crossed the $800M mark worldwide, which means that, even given its gargantuan production and marketing budget, it is now in profit, and is likely to generate a tidy sum once the ancillaries are counted. And yet, the mood over at DC/Warner is tense; with its rapidly declining earnings, it is unlikely to enter the "$1 billion club" currently occupied by Marvel's twoAvengers films, and has already been outgrossed byZootopia, released just three weeks earlier. How this will portend for the plannedDC Cinematic Universe is uncertain. All eyes are now onSuicide Squad. | ||
| 4 | Danny Willett | 811,305 | The little-known English golfer came out of nowhere to unseat the favourite,Jordan Spieth, at the2016 Masters Tournament. After his firstmajors win, you can safely assume that his article won't be marked "Low importance" for much longer. | ||
| 5 | Doctor Strange | 991,468 | Marvel's next big introduction is the Sorcerer Supreme ofEarth-616, charged with defending our reality from mystic threats. Yes, I just wrote that. The illusive if less-than-illustrative trailer for the new film, due this fall, premièred this week, and has already garnered a combined ~20M Youtube views. You might think this marks a jarring shift in tone fromIron Man andCaptain America, but hey, compared to working inThor, this should be easy. The suitably intenseBenedict Cumberbatch (pictured, on set) will be assuming the cape. | ||
| 6 | Donald Trump | 762,586 | With no Republican primaries this week and little in the way of public awkwardness to push his numbers, Trump seems to be in the list on the strength of his pure, unadulterated Trumpness. Expect him to shoot up again next week after his stomping victory in his home state of New York. | ||
| 7 | Fan (film) | 725,098 | ThisBollywood hybrid ofThe Fan andSingle White Female, in which a Bollywood star and an obsessed lookalike (both played byShah Rukh Khan (pictured)) gradually become entangled in a game of revenge, was made on a relatively hefty budget of ₹850 million ($13 million) but has already earned more than ₹1.31 billion ($19M) in just five days. | ||
| 8 | Deaths in 2016 | 668,908 | The annual list of deaths has always been a fairly consistent visitor to this list, and often in the Top 10, averaging about 650,000 views a week at this point. | ||
| 9 | Captain America: Civil War | 646,147 | With the relative disappointment ofDawn of Justice, all eyes are turning to the next big comic blockbuster released this year which, despite theCaptain America headline, is being marketed as anotherAvengers movie (withSpiderman!). Whether this will see it over the $1 billion hurdle remains to be seen, but the omens are good. | ||
| 10 | Suicide Squad (film) | 562,067 | DC Comics' ramshackle crew of pressgangedsupervillains, forced to do the will of a shadowy organization or let their heads explode, have garnered far more buzz in the build-up to their August release thanBatman v Superman ever managed, thanks to some decently snarky trailers, the latest of which was released this week, and the first live-action appearance of DC fan favouriteHarley Quinn, played byMargot Robbie. |