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It’s that time! Time for my semi-annual collection of all the “Flops, Bombs and Misses” on streaming for the first half of 2025.
Up first, films. (And specials…)
As happens every year, I’m once again semi-surprised by the number of movies that are going straight-to-streaming. I always expect that number to start going down, but it never does. I thought I might be able to do a Top 30-or-so list (as I did a few years back) this year, but every major streamer still had a scripted straight-to-streaming film flop. So every streamer gets an entry!
If you want to read the full methodology for how I assemble this list, you can find it at the bottom of this article. In short, this list is…
…scripted and unscripted films and specials,
…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,
…that got no/poor ratings,
…from January 2025 to the end of June 2025.
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.
In the past, if a film made a viewership chart—and that just meant Nielsen at the time—that could save it from making this list. But since Luminate only features straight-to-streaming films, many more films make the charts, but usually with tiny numbers. Those small viewership figures, then, confirm that many of these films flopped. As I did last year, I included notable theatrical film flops at the end.
I try to judge things fairly, not grading on a curve, which can be difficult. For example, The Gorge did well on Apple TV+…for them, not compared to other streamers. Meanwhile, both Disney+ and Netflix had some films that eked out okay viewership numbers, but I think they’re clearly misses.
Which brings me to the great equalizer: budget.
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.
Also, keep an eye out for IP. Often, when we talk about franchises, it seems like the conversation only applies to theatrical films, but for the last two years, IP and franchises have come to streaming…and this year, multiple streamers buried IP-based films on streaming.
Let’s dive right in!
Max, er, HBO Max
- The Parenting
Honorable Mentions: NA.
Good job Max, er, HBO Max! They only had one Max/HBO Max Original film flop, but this might be a technicality. Many HBO documentaries (like My Mom Jayne and Enigma) go to HBO first, so I don’t tally them up here. Same goes for Mountainhead, HBO’s 2025 original film this year, which made Samba TV and HBO PR shared a datecdote that it had 1.3 million viewers, good enough to avoid “miss” territory. HBO seems to release one exclusive film per year now, which is a fine rate.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery is sending lots of films (and lots of original films) to theaters and doing very well! Keep doing that!
Winner: The Parenting
The Parenting wins by default, but it still should have done better; every scripted streaming film should be able to make at least one viewership chart. I’d argue that this should have gone to theaters—look at the cast!—but based on the awful IMDb scores (5.7 on 7,800 reviews, no downvote campaign) and critical reviews (45 on Metacritic), I’m guessing that Warner Bros. Discovery buried this one. And I doubt it was all that expensive. It’s a miss, but not a huge one.
Paramount+
- Star Trek: Section 31
Honorable Mentions: The Children of October 7, Eric Clapton Unplugged… Over 30 Years Later
Paramount+ just doesn’t make all that much original content anymore—for film or TV—but we’ll see if/when/how that changes now that they’ve finalized their ownership situation. In the first half of this year, they didn’t have all that much in the way of expensive flops. Neither of Paramount+’s documentaries looked all that expensive (hence why they’re just honorable mentions), unlike other streamers’ documentaries.
Winner: Star Trek: Section 31
Paramount+’s only scripted exclusive wins by default, but this is a Star Trek film! And it does NOT look cheap, clearly failing my “Does the trailer look expensive?” test. Sure, it’s not “blockbuster going to theaters” expensive, but it’s not TV movie cheap either. According to Nielsen, this one garnered a lackluster 2.8 million hours in its first week out, confirming its bomb status. And both critics (43 on Metacritic) and audiences (3.5 on 17K reviews, but with a downvote campaign) disliked this movie.
It’s also our first example of “IP going to streaming” today.
Peacock
- Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
- Eurovision Song Contest 2025
- SNL50: The Homecoming Concert
Honorable Mentions: Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy, Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy, WrestleMania IX: Becoming a Spectacle
Like HBO Max and Paramount+, Peacock didn’t have much in the way of scripted flops (with one giant exception). I’d highlight the Eurovision Song Contest 2025; I keep wondering when/if this very famous singing competition will ever resonate in America (maybe the US needs an entry?), or if it would do better on another streamer…or on broadcast television as well. SNL50: The Homecoming Concert was a star-studded event that I thought might do better. It probably should have aired on broadcast, too, given the ratings of the other SNL programs.
Winner: Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
Like HBO Max and Paramount+, Peacock didn’t have much in the way of scripted flops with one giant exception: Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. And unlike those other two films, this one obviously should have gone to theaters. How do I know? Because it grossed $130 million overseas! On a $50 million budget! This is semi-popular IP that clearly resonated with audiences globally. With an actual marketing push, this film could have done much, much better on streaming—I doubt most customers even know that this movie exists—something a company like NBCUniversal, which knows first hand that films pop on video-on-demand after theatrical releases, should have seen.
It missed Nielsen and Samba TV and made Luminate at a lowly 5.0 million hours, then dropped off a week later (and I mean completely dropped off the top fifty list, which is unprecedented).
Consider this a leader for “Miss of the Year”.
Apple TV+
- Bono: Stories of Surrender
- Echo Valley
- Fountain of Youth
Honorable Mentions: Deaf President Now!
When it comes to Apple Studios/Apple TV+, I can be pretty unsparing in my criticism, like the last time I wrote about their film flops and their (alleged) gigantic annual losses. But when it comes to one film from the first half of 2025, I’m grading them on a bit of a curve. (Don’t worry about me taking it easy forever. When the TV section comes out, that generosity will disappear.)
Based on the estimates I’ve seen, The Gorge probably cost about $70 million (which is a lot of money to spend on a TV movie!), but it made the Nielsen charts for three weeks (albeit at a lowly 6.7 million hours peak, and just over 15 million hours over the three weeks it spent on the Nielsen top ten). The good news is that it’s Apple’s biggest film of all time, with the caveat that most of their other films did really poorly. Now, it wouldn’t be a success for Disney, Netflix or Prime Video, but it is for Apple TV+. That’s just enough viewership at just low enough of a budget to not be considered a miss…for them.
But Apple still had misses. I’m guessing that Apple Studios overpaid Bono for his documentary. I couldn’t find a budget estimate for Echo Valley, but it stars Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney, missed Nielsen and Samba TV, and couldn’t crack 5 million hours on Luminate. That’s one of the biggest film misses on streaming for the first half of the year. But it’s not as big as the winner…
Winner: Fountain of Youth
Even graded on a curve, Fountain of Youth (from Guy Ritchie, starring John Krasinski, Natalie Portman and Eiza Gonzalez) is a big ($180 million big) miss. That’s just way too much money to spend on a film that grabbed a measly 5.8 million hours according to Nielsen.
I could probably write this in multiple sections—like with Star Trek: Section 31 above—but I’ll say it once here: if a film won’t make its money back in theaters, it’s probably better to not make it at all.
Disney+
- Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip
- Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical
- Pets
- Sea Lions of the Galapagos
Honorable Mentions: Guardians of the Galapagos, The Lion King at the Hollywood Bowl
And now we get into the meaty section of this article, looking at the streamers with lots of film misses from the first half of 2025. Fortunately for Disney+, they didn’t have a ton of scripted misses, with one big caveat.
Pets and Sea Lions of the Galapagos are just documentaries. That said, Disney used to make okay money putting nature docs like these into theaters; strategically, I think they should try that again, even for limited releases with small-ish marketing budgets. Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical flopped on streaming (the theater-to-streaming pipeline hasn’t been producing hits), but probably wasn’t expensive.
While I avoid discussing theatrical films for most streamers, I will mention them now. Disney’s theatrical films—Snow White, The Lion King: Mufasa and Captain America: Brave New World—flopped on Disney+. As I wrote in the introduction (and we’ll write again regarding Netflix), it’s relative. Sure, these movies had higher viewership compared to many other streaming films, but looking at their budgets, all three of those films needed to do much better.
Winner: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip
This looks to be one of the final casualties of the Disney+ straight-to-streaming era, getting greenlit in December of 2020. I can’t argue that this IP is big enough to justify a trip to theaters, à la Freakier Friday, but at the same time, it is a sequel to a moderately successful film and a popular kids book series, so it would have benefited from the theatrical push. But it can be too expensive to change the contracts for straight-to-streaming films.
Hulu
- Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything
- Control Freak
- Memes & Nightmares
- O’Dessa
- Predator: Killer of Killers
- SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)
- Summer of 69
Honorable Mentions: Bill Burr: Drop Dead Years, Carrie Underwood: Reflection, The Quincy Avery Effect
Man, Hulu, that’s quite a few scripted movie misses!
Control Freak looks like it had a reasonable budget (without looking cheap), and I’ve argued in the past that all horror films deserve a shot in theaters, but with a 4.6 on IMDb (and no downvoting campaign), viewers didn’t like this one. Memes & Nightmares doesn’t look expensive, but it’s yet another piece of basketball content from LeBron James and Maverick Carter that didn’t resonate with audiences. I like, if not love, the swing Disney took with Predator: Killer of Killers, but I can’t pretend like it did well on the ratings charts. (Luminate said that it had 3.0 million hours in its first week.) Summer of 69 looks affordable enough, but how will Hollywood know that audiences don’t want to watch R-rated comedies in theaters anymore if they never put them in theaters?
I hold documentaries to a lower bar (since they have lower budgets), but SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) comes from Questlove, and I doubt he comes cheap or that Hulu held firm on the negotiations with his team. As for Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything, as I wrote when this came out, why wouldn’t this documentary premiere on ABC first, the place where Barbara Walters’ presumably aging fans still actually watch TV?
Winner: O’Dessa
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