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It’s that time of year…time to start recapping the streaming ratings data from 2024. (Technically, for this article, the second half of 2024.) Yeah, I don’t release my analysis at the beginning of December (like some outlets), since the year hasn’t finished. Heck, I don’t even release it in January! Instead, I wait to get all the data, which comes out a month after the year ends for Nielsen, and then I start the laborious process of going through it all.
(If you want this process to go quicker, please subscribe!)
One thing will be different this time around: I’m not mentioning the theatrical versus streaming debate. (Fine, I’m going to mention it exactly twice, here and in one other place.) Frankly, I think the debate is settled. Three streamers/studios—the two streamers that don’t need to make money and the one steamer with a giant user base and a philosophical aversion to theaters—didn’t send their movies to theaters; everyone else did. This doesn’t apply to every movie—I have a terrific example below of the perfect made-for-TV genre—but most mid-budget-or-higher movies benefit from a theatrical run.
Instead of repeating this same point, ad nauseam, I set myself the challenge of trying to find a unique insight/take for each streamer, and I think I accomplished that.
If you want to read the full methodology for how I assemble this list, it’s at the bottom of this article. In short, this article is…
…scripted and unscripted films,
…that went straight-to-streaming,
…from the eight major streamers,
…in the US (using US-only ratings),
…excluding true crime, short films (anything shorter than thirty minutes), “making of” specials, and foreign-language films,
…from Jul-2024 to the end of Dec-2024.
Remember, price matters. For example, if a film costs north of $100 million, then it needs to get lots and lots of streaming viewership to justify that budget. As with past editions, I ordered this list going from best streamer (least number of flops) to worst (the most misses), taking the size of the flops into consideration. Reminder: this article does not represent my personal opinion—many of these films are great!—but I follow the data, and a miss is a miss and a bomb is a bomb.
This article summarizes the second half of 2024; you can find the recap of the first half here.
Okay, on to the flops!
Peacock
- Colin Jost and Michael Che Present: New York After Dark
Honorable Mentions: Gary, The Killer
Peacock’s only scripted miss, The Killer, gets a pass (just being named as an honorable mention as opposed to an outright flop) because it got 6.8 million hours according to Nielsen, which just saves it from ignominy. Still, I don’t think this bet paid off.
Biggest Miss: Colin Jost and Michael Che Present: New York After Dark
Peacock’s live comedy special gets the “win”/loss because viewers weren’t able to watch this live special the week after it aired, something I noted at the time (and was corroborated by a post on Reddit). It’s available now, which means there might have been some sort of technical issue at the time. But Disney does the same thing with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies, and that doesn’t make sense to me either. (For the latter, I think it’s a rights issue, but still.)
The takeaway? If a show is live, it should still be available right after it airs/streams.
Paramount+
- Apartment 7A
Honorable Mentions: The French Montana Story, Larger Than Life: Reign of the Boybands, Pulisic, Uncharted.
Biggest Miss: Apartment 7A
Paramount’s Rosemary’s Baby prequel wins by default, because Paramount hasn’t been sending a lot of films (or titles period) to Paramount+ in the second half of 2024. (Their other straight-to-streaming film from this first half of the year, Dear Santa, did well.) Then again, that’s what happens when you change ownership.
Of the traditional studios, Paramount, and hence Paramount+, faces the most uncertainty, related to the Skydance acquisition (assuming it goes through). I see three scenarios:
- They could return to a streaming-first strategy. Call this the “copy Netflix route”.
- They could return to a theaters-first strategy. Call this the “Paramount classic route”.
- They could shutter Paramount+ entirely. Say it with me: “Become a content arms dealer”.
There’s also the Skydance Animation wildcard. Notably, Netflix acquired the rights to Skydance Animation from Apple TV+, and the initial efforts have been less than successful.
Max
- Caddo Lake
- Sweethearts
Honorable Mentions: Lost in the Amazon: The Rescue That Shocked the World, Louder: The Soundtrack of Change
The rest of this article is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you want to know…
- What Max’s miss of the second half says about the horror genre…
- My big recommendation on how to fix Disney+ films…
- Why festival acquisitions can backfire…
- What the new reporting on Apple TV+’s annual losses says about the threat facing all of Hollywood…
- Why Prime Video is shifting their film strategy…
- And Netflix’s struggling prestige strategy…
… please subscribe. We can only keep doing this great work with your support.
If you’d like to read more about why you should subscribe, please read these posts about the Streaming Ratings Report, why it matters, why you need it, and why we cover streaming ratings best.
