Today, we’re diving into the depths of my Excel spreadsheet for a fairly comprehensive overview of the theatrical films that performed best on streaming during their launch period in the United States between 2021 and mid-2025 across the main SVOD services. But before we get into it, please take the time to read the methodology used in this report, because as always, it’s important.
📈 Methodology
Here are the main points of the methodology to keep in mind while reading this report.
The data in this Streaming Report covers only the U.S. territory on TV and is expressed in millions of CVEs (Complete Viewings Equivalent). This means I divide the viewing minutes published by Nielsen by the runtime of each film to compare them on equal footing. It’s a simple reverse engineering of Nielsen’s own process, since the institute calculates the average number of viewers at every minute of a film and multiplies it by its duration to produce the figures in its weekly Top 10.
The data used includes films released between January 1, 2021, and June 30, 2025, i.e., since the establishment of Nielsen’s triple weekly ranking system.
To build the largest and most comparable sample across services, I chose to focus on the first 14 and 28 days of availability, when most viewing takes place and which is enough to determine whether a film is a hit or not. The selected films appeared for at least 2 to 3 weeks in Nielsen’s weekly Top 10 (depending on their release day in the week), which allows me to estimate their 14- or 28-day numbers with relative certainty. For certain films that only appeared for one week, I used comparisons with other titles to estimate a 14-day figure. All such estimated numbers are marked with an asterisk.
The films I kept are those released in their first or second pay window on streaming, not catalog titles that rotate in and out of services depending on licensing deals.
Sony films on Netflix in the U.S. are not included in the ad-supported tier, which naturally reduces their potential audience.
Between January 2021 and August 2025, Nielsen expanded the range of SVOD services it measures by adding HBO Max, Peacock, etc., over 2022 and 2023. As a result, some films released before these services were included may have slipped through the cracks of their rankings.
The 100 most-watched theatrical films in the U.S. on TV during their first 14 days of release between January 2021 and June 2025.
The best starting point is probably to first establish the list of the 100 most-watched theatrical films according to Nielsen’s figures and the methodology detailed above and the top two films in this ranking might surprise you.
Indeed, the Amazon Prime film Red One is the most-watched during its first 14 days of availability, ahead of Encanto and Moana 2.
There are at least two reasons for the success of Red One, in my view. The first is that its availability on Prime came on December 12, 2024, less than a month after its theatrical release, an Amazon initiative that did not sit well with U.S. theater operators, who strongly dislike films skipping traditional release windows so quickly. But you have to understand Amazon in this case: Red One is a Christmas film. Releasing it after Christmas would have made no sense for Prime, which is the second reason it likely soared in the Nielsen charts. It also benefited from the marketing boost of its theatrical release (which was not considered a success, earning less than $100M at the box office).
Not being a box office hit is a point it shares with at least two other films in the Top 10, namely Encanto and Elemental. Encanto thrived at Christmas 2021 when it debuted on Disney+, thanks to the buzz around its soundtrack and the success of the song We Don’t Talk About Bruno. As the table shows, Encanto had a much stronger performance after the 14 days mark and is well ahead of Red One after 28 days.
Animated films occupy 8 spots in the Top 10 but only 25 spots in the Top 100, and some appear twice—especially Universal films, which have two streaming windows: a first pay window on Peacock and a second on Netflix (which generally draws higher viewership). 38 films in the Top 100 are sequels, and only 34 of the Top 100 can be considered original films not adapted from other intellectual properties.
The Importance (or Not) of the Distribution Channel
Since the beginning of the Nielsen viewership era, Netflix’s performance has always been attributed to its far larger U.S. subscriber base compared to its direct competitors. However, while 5 films in the Top 10 are on Netflix, they do not occupy the top 5 spots in the ranking, being beaten by films on Prime Video (whose U.S. subscriber and/or user numbers are a big unknown, with estimates ranging from 50M to 150M) and Disney+ (which has over 55M subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, compared to more than 80M for Netflix).
This shows that subscriber count alone does not determine the success of a theatrical film on streaming and that basically every film has a chance to become a huge hit. Conversely, one could wonder whether Barbie (#67) or Top Gun: Maverick (#84) would have had much larger audiences if they had been released on Netflix instead of HBO Max and Paramount+.
However, that’s not to say that the platform’s role in streaming viewership is unimportant, and here’s an example: 23 films in the Top 100 earned less than $50M at the U.S. box office, and of these 23, 21 were later released on Netflix (versus 1 on Disney+ and 1 on HBO Max). This means that Netflix allows films that did not necessarily succeed in theaters to reach a significant new audience on streaming—something other services struggle to achieve, as films earning under $50M and released on other services rarely surface in Nielsen’s Top 10.
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The Most-Watched Theatrical Films During Their Launch Period, by Service.
Let’s now go service by service, and to be honest, this includes basically all the films in my dataset, well beyond the Top 100.
Netflix
On the Netflix side, the deal with Sony is in full swing, providing the streamer’s ad-free catalog with theatrical films. Uncharted has remained at the top for several years now, but recently Kraven: The Hunter and Madame Web have been the service’s highlights, despite very disappointing box office results. In fact, this ranking shows that there isn’t really a correlation between theatrical success and streaming success on Netflix, with box office hits like It Ends with Us, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, or Insidious: The Red Door delivering only modest streaming numbers.
Netflix also has another deal with Universal for the pay-one window of its animated films, and these have also performed very well on the service, such as Super Mario Bros.: The Movie. It’s worth noting, however, the disappointment of Kung Fu Panda 4, which did relatively well in theaters but much less so on Netflix and Peacock.
It should also be noted that all Universal animated films perform much better in their second window on Netflix than in their first window on Peacock, sometimes doubling their viewership.
Additionally, Netflix has also carved out a niche as the primary (or secondary, after a run on smaller services like Starz) streaming home for very specific theatrical films—action films whenever possible starring Gerard Butler, or films based on religion, sports, or indie releases with strong buzz, like Godzilla Minus One, RRR, or To Leslie, which had an Oscar nomination. The best example of this category is the action film Land of Bad, which earned only $6.5M at the US box office before racking up over 14.5M CVEs in its first 14 days on Netflix.
Finally, to be completely thorough, Netflix has also received a few Warner Bros films in their second window on a non-exclusive basis, with mixed streaming results. For example, Dune: Part II garnered twice as much viewership on Max as on Netflix, whereas the opposite is true for Meg 2: The Trench and Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1, which both attracted twice as many viewers on Netflix as on HBO Max.
Disney+
To analyze film viewership on Disney+, I’ll break them down into several categories, starting with Disney Animation films. Here, as mentioned earlier, Encanto has reigned supreme for more than three years now with 34M CVEs in its first 14 days. Since the first film was a hit with renewed viewership on Disney+, it’s not surprising to see Moana 2 in second place, even though over time it attracts far fewer viewers than the phenomenon that was Encanto.
For Pixar theatrical films, Elemental leads the pack, ahead of Inside Out 2 and Lightyear. Interestingly, whether we look at Disney Animation or Pixar films, two original titles—not necessarily box-office hits—achieved the highest streaming numbers at launch, outperforming two sequels that were huge successes in theaters.
On the MCU side, recent performances are well below past successes, both at the box office and in streaming. Captain America: Brave New World marks the weakest 14-day launch of any MCU film on Disney+, while Deadpool & Wolverine also fails to reach high viewership despite a record-breaking theatrical run. We’ll have to wait a few months to see where Thunderbolts* will land.
Other Disney live-action films have also been released on Disney+, and recently Snow White didn’t set the charts on fire, even though its launch was similar to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, despite earning only half as much at the U.S. box office.
Finally, for a few months in 2021 and 2022, Disney experimented with Disney+ Access, a paid add-on within Disney+ that allowed users to rent theatrical films on a pay-per-view basis if their theatrical release had been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, before the film eventually returned to the “regular” Disney+ catalog. Interestingly, Black Widow had the strongest launch among the four films offered through this initiative in the paid tier, but once it moved into the standard Disney+ catalog, it generated less viewership than the others.
Hulu
Staying within the Disney universe, Hulu also hosted a few theatrical films that managed to make it into the Nielsen Top 10. The ranking of the most-watched films in streaming largely mirrors their box office performance, with two exceptions: Poor Things and A Haunting in Venice, which perform comparatively better in streaming.
For Poor Things, if I’m not mistaken, it was released on Hulu right in the middle of its Oscars campaign, competing in major categories, which likely helped it gain visibility and prominence on the service.
HBO Max
Now let’s turn to HBO Max, which has a very recent new leader: A Minecraft Movie, taking the crown from Black Adam. Barbie, Dune: Part II, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice seem to have performed slightly below what we might have expected given their theatrical runs, whereas The Menu is well above expectations.
HBO Max also has a first-window pay deal with A24, but so far, there hasn’t been any standout audience success, with very low numbers for Civil War, which remains the A24 film with the best launch on the service to date.
Naturally, this year, all eyes are on the audience figures for Superman. Will it beat Black Adam? Let’s hope so.
Peacock
Let’s move on to Peacock, which can rely on its animated films to make a mark in the Nielsen Tops. In fact, Peacock’s performance closely mirrors U.S. box office results, with the notable exception of Kung Fu Panda 4, which is a real streaming disappointment. This doesn’t seem to faze DreamWorks, which appears to be working on a sequel.
But Peacock has also managed to break through with live-action films, and the leader isn’t necessarily the one you’d expect: it’s Five Nights at Freddy’s, which achieved the best launch with 13.4M CVEs in its first 14 days. It should be noted that both it and Halloween Ends benefited from simultaneous theatrical and streaming releases, which explains their strong performance on Peacock. The closer a streaming availability is to a theatrical release, the higher the performance on streaming, it would seem.
At the bottom of the ranking, we can see that Fast X didn’t perform well, and Oppenheimer may have slightly underperformed on Peacock compared to its box office results.
Paramount+
At Paramount+, children’s films lead the way, with IF in first place. The film grossed over $100M at the US box office, but it also performed very well on Paramount+, notably surpassing Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One with Tom Cruise.
Two recent films are absent from this Paramount+ ranking: Sonic The Hedgehog 3 and Gladiator 2. The first likely performed well thanks to its franchise and target audience, but its trajectory in the Nielsen Top 10 was quite odd, not appearing in its first weeks and only showing up several weeks after being available on the service which never happens. Gladiator 2, on the other hand, failed to make the Nielsen Top 10 following its January 2025 release, even though the bar this year has been relatively low—but I will discuss other Nielsen misses later.
Apple TV+
On the Apple TV+ side, we’ll be brief since we only have figures (obtained via leaks, not official Top 10s) for two films: Killers of the Flower Moon and Argylle, both showing streaming audiences roughly in line with their reception at the US box office.
Among the most recent missing titles, we can note Napoleon and Fly Me to the Moon. We’ll see how F1 performs when it hits Apple TV+ in a few months.
Prime Video
Finally, Prime Video manages to place two films in the Top 20, namely Red One in first position and The Accountant 2 in 17th place. These two films succeeded where AIR had failed, combining a decent theatrical run with rather strong streaming numbers.
But Prime Video can also occasionally break into the Nielsen Top 10 with Universal films, for which it holds the second pay window until the end of 2026, before those rights move to Netflix. In this second window, Jurassic World Dominion achieved the best audience on Prime Video (unfortunately, Peacock was not yet tracked by Nielsen when it was released there).
When comparing audience figures on Peacock in the Pay-1 window and on Prime Video in the Pay-2 window, we can note that Twisters performs very well in both cases, whereas the opposite is true for Fast X, whose future performance remains rather uncertain for now.
The Misses.
Whether due to a release on niche services or platforms not supported by Nielsen at the time, several important films are missing, such as all the movies released simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max in 2021. Also absent are The Batman by Matt Reeves and Joker: Folie à Deux, the latter simply didn’t generate enough audience to break into the Nielsen Top 10, combining a theatrical underperformance with a streaming one.
Since the end of 2024, I’ve been tracking theatrical releases that fail to make it into the Nielsen charts. Over the past nine months, notable examples include Smile 2 ($69M US box office), Longlegs ($74M), Heretic ($28M), Companion ($20.8M), Wolf Man ($20.7M), Heart Eyes ($30M), the animated film Dog Man ($98M), The Woman in the Yard ($22.4M), among others.
The common thread among almost all these films? They are horror movies—and if there is one genre that doesn’t really succeed on streaming despite performing well in theaters, it’s horror.
That concludes this overview. I hope it has given you a clear picture of which theatrical films performed well on streaming in the U.S. across all services. We’ll be back in a few days with a look at Netflix’s global viewership.
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