Netflix is to double the size of its base at Shepperton Studios, where it has made productions including the TV series Enola Holmes and films including The Old Guard, as the US streaming service looks to ramp up its British-made output. Netflix, which spent $1bn (£740m) making about 60 TV shows and films in the UK last year, including The Crown and Sex Education, first struck a deal to make the historic studio in Surrey its permanent production base in 2019 in a race to secure studio space amid a shortage fuelled by the streaming boom. “We are delighted to announce the expansion of our production presence in the UK,” said Anna Mallett, vice-president of physical production for the UK, Europe, Middle East and Africa region. “The new contract with Shepperton highlights our commitment to investing in the UK creative industry and will provide a wealth of opportunities and production jobs, from entry level to heads of department.” The new long-term deal comes as Shepperton Studios, home to films from Alien to A Clockwork Orange, prepares to more than double in size. Parent company Pinewood Studios, where films from the Bond franchise to Star Wars are shot, has received planning permission to expand Shepperton from 14 stages to 31 stages. Netflix will start using the expanded site on completion in 2023, but it will not take up all the new space. Netflix also revealed that viewers have spent more than 1.6bn hours watching mega-hit Squid Game, as the streaming giant announces it is to publish weekly “Top 10” lists to give viewers, investors and production companies more insight into its most popular content. Netflix, which in the past has been criticised for the lack of transparency in how it reveals viewing data, is to start releasing four weekly lists showing the most popular English and non-English films, and TV shows globally based on hours viewing. “This is an important step forward for Netflix, the creators we work with and our members,” Pablo Perez De Rosso, vice-president of content strategy, planning and analysis at Netflix, said in a blogpost explaining Netflix’s new policy. “People want to understand what success means in a streaming world, and these lists offer the clearest answer to that question in our industry.” The new weekly lists, published for the first time on Tuesday, show that Squid Game remained the second-most popular TV series globally with 42.8m hours of the dystopian drama viewed globally in the week to 14 November as it continues to prove addictive viewing two months after release. Season 3 of Narcos: Mexico proved to be the most popular TV series last week while Red Notice, the big budget blockbuster starring Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot and Dwayne Johnson, was Netflix’s biggest film globally with 148m hours viewed. The company said it would also make more frequent updates to its “all-time” biggest hits lists, which are based on hours viewed in the first 28 days after a title’s release and were published for the first time last month, which excluded any official data on Squid Game. In an update, Netflix revealed that Squid Game has amassed 1.6bn hours viewed in its first 28 days, almost triple the popularity of its second most popular global series, Bridgerton, on 625m hours. Perez De Rosso admitted that Netflix has in the past come in for criticism for the opaque measurement methodology it has used to illustrate popularity, while TV and production companies that make its content have complained they have little way to measure success. “Figuring out how best to measure success in streaming is hard, and there’s no one perfect metric,” said Perez De Rosso. “Traditional measures like box office or share of audience [for linear TV] aren’t relevant to most streamers, including Netflix. We believe engagement as measured by hours viewed is a strong indicator of a title’s popularity, as well as overall member satisfaction, which is important for retention in subscription services.”