Box Office Is Bad. Streaming Films Are So-So. I Have a Win-Win Solution
Top straight-to-TV original films could have changed 2025 with a detour to the theater — I've got the numbers to prove it
I offer analysis for paid subscribers every other Thursday. I wrote about the overhyped valuations of A24 and Angel Studios; covered 7 sleeper hits of the Streaming Wars; and explored why animation continues to make bank and IP dominates the box office.
This year, Netflix had two of its biggest hits of all time with KPop Demon Hunters and Happy Gilmore 2.
That’s the good news.
The bad news? Everything else. I’d be surprised if anyone could answer these questions about some of the top streaming films in 2025:
Can you name the top three Netflix original films after KPop and Gilmore?
What’s the biggest non-F1 Apple original in 2025?
Prime Video had a film starring Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson come out in August. What was it called?
If you struggled with those, congratulations — you’re exactly like everyone else. And that’s the problem. In 2025, most streaming “hits” might as well be witness protection programs for movies.
Which is why the three headlines below from early November matter so much. They explain the real economics of where film is going — and why so many filmmakers are suddenly reconsidering their allegiances.
On Nov. 6, I saw this headline in The Wrap:
On the same day, The Hollywood Reporter gave us our first hint as to why Cregger might make such a choice:
For the most successful film in Netflix history Sony got… a $15 million bonus? That’s it? A couple of weeks later, The Wrap also provided a scoop that puts that number in context:
In other words, if you want to get paid, theatrical films still offer the biggest upside.
Of course, that’ll only be the case if theaters keep, you know, existing.
Box office watchers (myself included) have already turned toward 2026, asking the biggest question of all: Can the domestic box office ever climb back above $10 billion, as it routinely did in the Before Times (pre-Covid)?
Maybe in 2026. The line-up of films looks legitimately strong, with Amazon MGM Studios’ biggest flick, Project Hail Mary,1 potentially kicking things off in March, a Mario movie for April, a Star Wars film in May, a Toy Story film in June and the year finishing off with an Avengers movie, not to mention a number of other potential blockbusters like the Michael Jackson biopic and a new Minions film.
But we do have to get there. As optimistic as I was for the start of 2025, domestic results haven’t lived up to expectations. Even as theaters had two big, big films to anchor November, box office weekends last month were down compared to the same weekends in 2024. And those weekends come off the heels of a (very well covered) extremely underwhelming October.
But where’s all the handwringing over the state of straight-to-streaming films?
If you’re worried about the future of feature films — and you should be — then you should also worry about streaming. Streaming has had a better first 10 months than it had in 2024, but only just barely. Worse, the streamers launched very few new franchises, and most streaming films remain all but anonymous in the larger cultural conversation.
Worse, I think the streamers left $1.5 billion or more in box office on the table in 2025.
In today’s newsletter, I’ll cover:
My chart that shows what 18 top straight-to-streaming movies would have made if they had a theatrical release this year
Netflix’s two undeniable smashes — and the data that exposes how little the rest of the streamers’ slates mattered
My look at how each October opening weekend would have looked if select streaming movies had opened theatrically
The fan-favorite genre missing entirely from October’s calendar — and the Netflix titles that prove the point
A chart that reveals why “hours watched” is a fake flex for valuing movies
How all this leads to the punchline (or punch in the gut): $1.5 billion in theatrical upside the streamers effectively threw away