(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.)
It’s time to continue my recap of 2025. As I wrote before, yes, this outing comes out a few (or more) months after the year ends, but I love this exercise, both personally and for readers:
- First, I provide a permanent record of what worked in 2025 and what didn’t.
- Second, I cut through a lot of the week-to-week noise and find larger signals.
- Third, it allows me to double-check some theses I have about how streaming evolved over the last year-plus.
I see a lot of punditry that focuses on one-off events—if not outright exceptions to the norm—and you can’t craft great strategy that way. Nor can you create sustainable business models. By looking at winners/hits and the losers/misses, I can see whether the one-offs in film and TV are true trends or just noise.
These recaps take a lot of work. I made nearly forty images before I even started writing, cutting the data every way I possibly could. And this article has over 25 charts or graphs just on the films that came out in theaters or on streaming in 2025. (The TV recap, which usually is a two-parter, is coming soon.) I looked at five different data sources, across multiple different categorical variables, looking at streaming and theatrical releases across all the major streamers. This report is about as deep—over 4,000 words—as you can get in one article.
Unlike past years, well, it’s pretty obvious what film took the crown (on streaming), but as always, we start with the top theatrical films and a not-spicy-anymore take…
Top Films at the US Box Office in 2025
Yeah, I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report, but as anyone who’s been reading me for any length of time knows, I’m a big believer in the power of theatrical films. I think a theatrical release increases a film’s awareness. Let me illustrate it this way:
Vince Vaughn starred in two straight-to-streaming films over the last year.
Name them.
I think even die-hard media junkies would struggle to answer this question. Heck, I couldn’t answer it! And this is my job!
Without further ado, the top 25 films at the US box office, color-coded by genre:
The obvious takeaway: audiences love family films and animated films; The Minecraft Movie, Lilo & Stitch and Zootopia 2 took the top three spots. Sean Fennessey just asked, in his debut article, why every studio isn’t making 4 to 7 family films a year. I don’t know either! (I’ve been writing about this for years.) A few years ago, I read countless think pieces about horror films, but I was one of the only people arguing for more family films and complaining about the long dry spells between family films coming to theaters.
Next takeaway: superhero films didn’t reach the heights of past years, but Superman still flew into fourth place, and four superhero films made the top fifteen. So yeah, this genre is down, but it’s not dead (yet).
Finally, horror gets a ton of praise as a genre, but it only had one film in the top fifteen, and six films in the top 25 domestic box office chart, despite 36 widely-released horror films. Again, the horror ROI can be great, but the ceiling is much lower than other genres.
As for which studios did well…
As you can see, in terms of the major studios, there was a lot of concentration at the top. Disney, Warner Bros. and Universal dominated the box office last year, grabbing the top eleven spots. I try to avoid connecting a certain news story to every bit of data analysis, but yes, Paramount-Skydance is trying to buy their way into the top ten. After all, Paramount only had one film in the top 25.
Sony also only had one. Life is tough as a content arms dealer! (Imagine if Sony had another very successful film they could have sent to theaters instead…maybe a successful kids film? Stay tuned for the next section…)
Meanwhile, between the buzziest, most-written about studios in the Hollywood entertainment press—A24, Angel, Neon and MUBI—had one film in the top 25: A24’s Marty Supreme. Hollywood and theaters need a more diverse ecosystem, but it also needs these niche players to start competing with the biggest studios, and right now, their hype outpaces their actual impact.
I should clarify: I don’t love this concentration at the top and I wish that it were more competitive. But Netflix and MGM-Prime Video have the best chances/resources to create a more competitive theatrical ecosystem (meaning break into the top ten biggest theatrical films). Luckily, Prime Video is committing to theaters and will almost certainly break into that top ten this year (while Netflix is now having conversations about it).
This is one of my favorite charts to make each year: coding films by whether they had action set pieces in them or not (even if the film isn’t an “action film” per se, like, say, The Minecraft Movie or Dogman). And yeah, audiences clearly looooooooove action films. Heck, it’s not like Wicked for Good and Lilo & Stitch didn’t have a few action set pieces.
Cinema is an excellent medium for spectacle. For event films. Action just works very well on screen. That is not necessarily the case with streaming films, as we’ll see soon.
The other thing audiences love…
Congrats to Sinners for being the only film in the top thirteen that wasn’t based on pre-existing IP. Then again, after a certain point, it’s pretty clear that audiences love watching movies based on pre-existing IP. Reboots or sequels are four of the top five films and eight of the top ten. Critics and pundits may not like it, but that’s the case. (Unlike two or three years ago, streaming films, more and more, are being based on IP, as we’ll see shortly.)
Fun fact: three of the five originals are horror films. And often, successful horror films become future IP.
Again, to reiterate my nuanced stance, I think Hollywood needs a mix of IP (reboots, sequels, franchises like Superman and Zootopia 2), new IP/franchises (like KPop Demon Hunters and The Minecraft Movie), and originals (Sinners, Project Hail Mary). But most pundits ignore/hate the first two types of films; all three matter for box office health.
The Top Films on Streaming Through the First Four Weeks in 2025
Let’s look at Nielsen’s streaming data first, since I have their data going back to 2020, starting with one of my favorite charts: the top film on the Nielsen film list every week of the last year:
On the one hand, the chart appears slightly more competitive than last year, but there are far fewer licensed films. As I’ve speculated in the past, Sony’s licensed films didn’t stream on Netflix’s ad-tier, limiting their upside, since a large chunk of Netflix’s customers are on that tier now in America. Prime Video came in second, and Disney+ won a few weeks as well. Obviously, KPop Demon Hunters had a big, long run in the middle of the year.
Next up, let’s look at the top streaming films through their first four weeks on the Nielsen charts. There are three main ways to cut the Nielsen data:
- The first four weeks of a film’s release on the Nielsen top ten charts.
- All the weeks on the Nielsen’s top ten lists.
- Nielsen’s annual rankings.
Each look has its own biases, but together they tell a complete picture. But we’ll cover them in that order. I start with the first four weeks since this captures something like 98% of most films’ viewership on the top ten charts. Of course, there’s one huge wild card this year, but don’t worry, we’ll get to that film shortly.
Netflix has sixteen of the top 25 films, which feels lower than I would have guessed for the number one streamer. Disney+ had a rough 2025, with only two films in the top 25. In 2023, they had six!
Congrats to Happy Gilmore 2, which claimed the top spot. Also, there are some odd entries. The Electric State, a $300 million+ budgeted film, is eleventh, which is actually a sign of how poorly that film did. Given its huge budget, it needed to make the top ten for Netflix. And Kraven the Hunter, a notorious box office bomb, made the charts. Yes, yes, we’ll get to KPop Demon Hunter’s huge outing, but as you can see, it really didn’t start as well as it finished. It was a true slow-growing hit.
Finally, I mentioned a Vince Vaughn streaming film up above. That film was Nonnas, a Netflix acquisition starring Vaughn and five other amazing, famous actresses. Did you remember it? I think you would have a much better chance of remembering it if it went to theaters. (His other recent film: Mike & Nick & Alice & Nick, a Hulu sci-fi action comedy from a few weeks ago.)
Now, let’s look at the top streaming films by whether they went to theaters or not…
We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out…
- …whether theatrical films do better on streaming or not…
- …what superhero film/box office bomb actually topped the streaming charts….
- …how IP is taking over the streaming charts…
- …Warner Bros. success on the film charts…
- …what four streaming films should have gone to theaters…
- …whether F1 can make any of the ratings charts…
- …look at over 25 more images…
- …from Nielsen, Luminate, Samba TV, IMDb, and JustWatch…
- And a lot more…
…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 this article about the Streaming Ratings Report, why it matters, why you need it, and why we cover streaming ratings best.
