Yep, Horror Still Has a Ceiling on Streaming

(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.)

Nielsen has a four-week delay for their streaming data, so today, I’m covering films that came out the week of 13-July. 

This was also the same week that The Odyssey came out in theaters. So it’s time to run another poll! 

As I mentioned last issue, I thought that Project Hail Mary might smash records on streaming, because if Red One—a middling theatrical film (it failed to crack $100 million at the domestic box office)—could smash records for Prime Video then PHM potentially could do even better. And readers agreed! (But it hasn’t smashed the ratings charts yet…)

So let’s ask the question again. How will The Odyssey perform on streaming in its opening week? Go here to vote.

Let me know what you think. Meanwhile, as I wrote last issue, we had enough streaming ratings stories that I broke this issue into two parts. 

Today, I tackle film and sports, including Major League Baseball on Netflix, Disney’s latest Disney Channel Original Movie, whether Shipwrecked at Sea will be a slow growing hit, the World Cup’s impressive finale week (and its impact on streaming), whether horror has a ceiling on streaming, an update on Enola Holmes 3 budget (and dismal viewership), whether long gaps between seasons hurt viewership, a Netflix YA franchise ends with a lackluster movie debut, a look at UX’s impact on customer decisions, all the flops, bombs and misses on streaming and more.

But we start with the buzziest film of the year coming to Peacock…

Let’s dive in!

(Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of July 13th to July 19th, 2026.

You can find a link to my terminology here.)

Film – Horror is a Theatrical Genre

Listen, I just want everyone to know that when Obsession inevitably gets snubbed for a Best Picture nomination, I’m going to make this face:

Right now, it’s right on the cusp of a nomination according to the Gold Derby, so we’ll see if it pulls off that rare-for-a-horror-film feat:

(As a reminder, I don’t demand that the Academy nominate popular films because they’re popular. I want them to nominate great films for Best Picture. But honestly? It feels like the Academy actually punishes popular films. I think many voters operate under a very limited definition of what defines “great cinema” that almost definitionally excludes most popular films. Two or three get through each year—The Odyssey and Dune: Part Three are the likely candidates—and Obsession absolutely deserves a spot this year.)

Even if it doesn’t get that level of industry acclaim, Obsession has already won the “buzziest film of the year” award. Beyond having 10,000 think pieces written about what it “means” for Hollywood, Obsession has a terrific 7.8 on over 320K IMDb reviews, which is elite for the horror genre. When it comes to interest, Obsession wins hands down compared to other streaming films; here’s the Google Trends:

And it grossed $260 million at the domestic box office, a genuine blockbuster. But that interest, buzz and box office didn’t translate to viewership. Here are the top films of 2026 so far…

I have a few explanations.

First, Peacock remains a smaller streamer, despite its recent gains. Obsession’s 7.6 million hours is still very good for that service. It isn’t close to the top film on Peacock, but it did well. 

So Obsession is up there for top Peacock films, with the eighth best first week of all time, but for context, that’s only had 1.2 million more hours than The Fall Guy. It did well for Peacock, but not “top film ever” on Peacock status.

Second, I am increasingly convinced that the absolute biggest theatrical films may have a lower ceiling on streaming for an ironic reason: a lot of people already saw the films in theaters. In other words, the top theatrical blockbusters convert potential viewers into actual theater-goers.

Folks who just had to see Obsession because of the buzz (including me!) went out and saw it in theaters. I’d say the same thing likely happened for PHM and I suspect it will happen with The Odyssey. This lowers the streaming ceiling because some folks don’t need to see those films on streaming because they’ve already seen them, especially a film like Obsession that isn’t exactly comfort food. 

Now, if you distribute/produce a film that outperforms in theaters, that’s fine! You get paid more per view in theaters than on streaming, plus the library value of that title will still be greater in the long run. I won’t be surprised if Obsession pops back on the charts this October. 

More and more, I’m noticing data hints that there’s a goldilocks zone for theatrical films on streaming: not big enough that they exhaust their viewership, but not small enough that they get labeled a bomb (critically and/or commercially) that folks want to avoid. Going back to Red One, people did want to see the Rock save Santa Claus in a Christmas action movie…they just weren’t in a rush to go out and pay $20 to see the Rock in a Christmas action movie in early November.

Finally, we come to the last reason, the why: unlike with Project Hail Mary, I never suspected this film would break records on streaming. Why?

It’s a horror film!

This genre has a ceiling. A very clear ceiling. To be blunt, some folks simply hate it. Anecdotally, I easily have a dozen friends whose wives won’t watch horror movies, and despite all the buzz, they didn’t want to watch Obsession! Now, I tend to distrust personal anecdotes, but the data supports this. Horror films regularly receive lower Cinemascore ratings than other genres. All this limits the upside of this genre. You can toss in the R rating, as well, meaning that it’s not appropriate for a lot of kids either. (Yes, I saw under-ten-year-olds, including some toddlers, in my screening of Backrooms, but that’s not the norm.)

As such, horror films have never done well on streaming. Here’s Peacock’s top horror films pulled out from above:

So yeah, Obsession’s performance—not shattering records on Peacock—doesn’t hurt this film’s reputation at all, since it already succeeded in the main way that matters: making money. It is another data point, though, that horror films—even the buzziest title of the year—just don’t do great on streaming.

Quick Notes on Film

– Before I dive into the rest of the stories on streaming film, I wanted to mention that I may have been too low on Enola Holmes 3’s production budget, which I wrote about last week. The author of the Substack Film FOIA pointed out that the number I reported—$25 to $30 million—is only the known number for the Malta tax credit. That number caps actor salaries and doesn’t include UK spending. If you factor those in, the budget is likely much higher, though I’d still guess around $50 million, and probably lower than the previous film. All in all, I’d love it if streaming films, like box office, had more regularly reported budgets. Meanwhile, Enola Holmes 3 fell off the Nielsen charts after just two weeks. That’s a grim performance.