The Hits and Misses on Netflix in the First Half of 2025

The first six months of the year are now behind us, and it's time to take a first look at what worked — and what completely flopped — in this first half of 2025. It’s been a rather strange year so far, with major failures from shows that should have been hits and some huge surprises. Let’s dive in!

 📈 Methodology

Metric used: Millions of CVEs, or Complete Viewings Equivalent.
I divide the total hours viewed (from Monday to the previous Sunday across 192 countries) from the Netflix Top 10 by the runtime of each title to make comparisons between programs of different lengths and release dates. This isn't a traditional audience measurement in viewers, but rather an arbitrary indicator, also adopted by Netflix since June 2023 under the term “views.” All the numbers in this article cover the first 14 days of release, which is already a pretty good indicator of success or bomb.

🎥 English-speaking films

🔝 The English-Language Films That Hit Big in the First Half of the Year.

The year started off strong for Netflix with the smash success of the action-comedy Back to Action, marking Cameron Diaz’s return to the screen. But things quickly went off the rails with the underwhelming performance of The Electric State — a film with a massive budget that failed to draw in viewers, despite its star-studded cast and Netflix’s heavy promotional push (complete with a tie-in video game). Subscribers clearly responded with a resounding “Thanks, but no thanks,” making it a textbook case of my favorite adage: viewers watch what they want to watch — regardless of marketing or the algorithm.

The surprise hit of the first half of the year is without a doubt Tyler Perry’s Straw, which won’t quite crack Netflix’s all-time Top 10, but it’ll come impressively close. Havoc and The Life List performed as expected, in my view — the latter in particular helping cement Sofia Carson as one of Netflix’s biggest film stars.

👎 The Misses of the First Half of the Year.

Despite its spot in the provisional Top 5 of the year, The Electric State still has to be called out — for all the reasons mentioned above. But I also want to shine a light on the animation category, which faced a tough first half of the year. The late-semester relative success of KPop Demon Hunter doesn’t erase the notably poor performances of The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl earlier in the year. Both posted very low viewership numbers, despite strong reviews — at least in the case of Wallace & Gromit.

🎥 International Films

🔝 The International Films That Hit Big in the First Half of the Year.

There’s a bit of a French “cocorico” moment in this first half of 2025, with two French Netflix films landing in the Top 5: Ad Vitam and K.O. (the latter’s presence likely a surprise even to Netflix). It’s also worth noting a clear trend among the successful titles: stories of people being pursued or caught in extraordinary situations within otherwise ordinary settings. The success of Exterritorial, for instance, echoes that of the Spanish film Nowhere from a few years back.

More broadly, we’re seeing a notable rise in international hits — the top three films on this list are now all part of Netflix’s all-time global Top 10, signaling a clear upward trend in non-English content reaching massive audiences.

👎 The Misses of the First Half of the Year.

One notable absence among the big hits of early 2025 is South Korean cinema, which hasn’t performed nearly as well as in previous years. Even South Korean animation stumbled, with Lost in Starlight turning in a complete flop. On the French side, it’s also impossible not to mention the failure of Banger — one of the worst-performing international Netflix films of the year so far.

 📺 English-Speaking Series

🔝 The New English-Language Series That Hit Big in the First Half of the Year.

The surprise hit of early 2025 is undoubtedly the British miniseries Adolescence, which dominated the conversation in terms of viewership, comfortably securing the second spot among the most-watched English-language Netflix series in its first 91 days. It’s yet another example of a Netflix show quietly released that exceeded all expectations. The rest of the Top 5 is also made up of miniseries, which means that no new series renewed for a sophomore season this year has yet made it into the Top 5 of most-watched new shows of the year — and that could become a problem down the line, as Netflix likely still needs big-hit series running over multiple seasons.

Looking specifically at new English-language series that might be renewed, the 2025 outlook is fairly positive so far: 7 renewals, 2 cancellations, and 3 series with undecided futures (I’m leaning toward two renewals for The Waterfront and Dept. Q, plus one cancellation for She the People, which still has half a season left to air this summer).

That would bring us to a total of 9 renewals versus 3 cancellations, which isn’t bad at all. The cancellations so far this year haven’t necessarily been about low viewership, but more about the audience relative to the budget. The Residence in particular was a very expensive series, and its cancellation might seem harsh given its decent audience numbers.

🔝 The English-Language Returning Series That Hit Big in the First Half of the Year.

On the English-language returning series front, things are a bit grim — only Ginny & Georgia manages to hold steady, showing just a modest drop compared to its previous season. The Night Agent lost nearly 40% of its season 1 audience, which is quite significant. XO, Kitty saw a slight dip in viewers, but given its budget, that’s still quite acceptable. You has ended, so its declining numbers don’t really matter anymore.

👎 The Misses of the First Half of the Year.

Being a second season of a spy series on Netflix in the first half of 2025 was definitely tough. Alongside The Night Agent, we saw the cancellation of The Recruit (dropping from 24M CVEs in season 1 to 13.6M in season 2) and the very likely cancellation of FUBAR (which plunged from 28M CVEs in season 1 to just 6.4M!).

That said, putting things in perspective, a quick look through my dataset shows no English-language Netflix series released over the past four years that managed to grow its audience from season 1 to season 2. This is a real challenge for Netflix, as I’ve mentioned before.

 📺 International Series

🔝 The New International Series That Hit Big in the First Half of the Year.

Internationally, there haven’t been any extraordinary hits among new series so far this year, but the top five shows have posted solid numbers, representing the three main non-US regions. The first two are miniseries (though The Gardener leaves the door open for more), while The Eternaut has already been renewed for a second season. The futures of The Are Murders (an anthology series) and The Trauma Code (Netflix’s flagship medical drama) remain more uncertain for now.

🔝 The International Returning Series That Hit Big in the First Half of the Year.

Squid Game once again crushes the competition and really stands as the towering figure overshadowing everything else, just like in 2024. I expect season 3 to perform lower than season 2, but it’s still too early to say for sure. Regardless, this South Korean series is the massive success story of early 2025 and is likely the most-watched new season or series on Netflix worldwide this year (yes, even ahead of Stranger Things season 5, which is expected to do less well).

Beyond that, it’s a bit of a quiet landscape: Weak Hero season 2 posted a decent score, while the Colombian series Fake Profile tanked in its second season, dropping from 24.6M CVEs to 10.7M in its first 14 days. The only bright spot is the Spanish series Wrong Side of the Tracks, which improved with its fourth season compared to season 3. Lastly, Sintonia ended on a down note with the release of its fifth and final season.

👎 The Misses of the First Half of the Year.

In addition to Fake Profile, there are two other returning series in 2025 with viewership numbers that dropped sharply compared to their previous seasons: the Spanish series The Snow Girl, which fell from 21.6M to 5.5M CVEs in season 2—ouch—and the Brazilian series Criminal Code, which dropped from 12.4M to 4.7M CVEs for its second season but was still renewed for a third.

I also can’t wrap up without mentioning the flop of the French series Super-Mâles, the only European spin-off of the Spanish series Machos Alfa among four versions that was not renewed for a second season.

That’s it for this overview of the first half of 2025. We’ll catch up again in a few days for a deep dive into Netflix’s latest weekly numbers.