Troy (film) saw 22x more Wikipedia readers than usual

What this article is

Troy is a 2004 epic historical action film directed by Wolfgang Petersen and written by David Benioff. Produced by units in Malta, Mexico, and Britain's Shepperton Studios, the film features an ensemble cast led by Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Diane Kruger, Sean Bean, Brian Cox, Brendan Gleeson, Rose Byrne, and Peter O'Toole. It is loosely based on Homer's Iliad in its narration of the entire story of the decade-long Trojan War—condensed into little more than a couple of weeks, rather than just the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon in the ninth year. Achilles leads his Myrmidons along with the rest of the Greek army invading the historic city of Troy, defended by Hector's Trojan army. The end of the film is not taken from the Iliad, but rather from Quintus Smyrnaeus's Posthomerica, as the Iliad concludes with Hector's death and funeral.

Summary text from the Wikipedia article "Troy (film)", available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full article.

What changed that day

The article grew by 17 characters that day. The largest single addition was 15 characters. See everything that changed on 2026-07-18 in Wikipedia's own diff view — that is where the reason for a surge is usually visible, written and sourced by the editors who were following the story.

How this was measured

Views are Wikimedia's own pageview counts for en.wikipedia, filtered to agent=user so automated traffic is excluded. The baseline is the median of the previous 60 days, which is used instead of the mean so that an earlier surge cannot flatten a later one. The multiple is the day's views divided by that median.