With the first half of 2025 behind us, it's the perfect time to take stock of which new movies and series have made the biggest splash on streaming platforms in the U.S. Nielsen and Luminate have already published their own mid-year rankings, but their methodologies, often based on total minutes watched and lacking a clearly defined observation window beyond the first half of the year, don’t always allow for fair comparisons. That’s why I’ve put together my own charts to better reflect the actual performance of this year’s new releases so far.
One of the advantages of analyzing the U.S. market is the variety of data sources available, offering a fairly comprehensive overview across all major streaming services. Of course, results can vary significantly depending on the source, as we’ll soon see. Also, keep in mind that this ranking is U.S.-specific. Ready? Let’s dive in!
📈 Methodology used in this analysis:
Metric : Millions of CVE (Complete Viewings Equivalent) over the first 14 days of release. I divide the total minutes watched from the Nielsen and Luminate charts by each title’s runtime to better compare programs of varying lengths and release dates.
🎥 The 30 most-watched new films on streaming during the first half of 2025.
Let’s start with the films, as there’s a clear winner for the first half of the year: Moana 2 on Disney+, which was a massive hit with 33.6 million CVEs in its first 14 days on the platform, far ahead of the action-comedy Back in Action, starring Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx on Netflix.
Note : Luminate ne s’intéresse qu’aux films originaux en streaming, d’où le manque de données pour les films sortis avant au ciné.
A few things to note in that ranking, midway through 2025:
In the Top 10, four films were first released in theaters, including three sequels and one adaptation of the best-selling video game of all time. Interestingly, the full Top 30 is split right down the middle: 15 films originally premiered in theaters, while the other 15 were released directly on streaming.
Among the 15 films that were first released in theaters, 10 are sequels, remakes, or adaptations. In contrast, of the 15 films released directly on streaming, only one falls into that category.
Three international films managed to break into the Top 30: the Mexican action film Counterattack, the German thriller Exterritorial and the French drama Ad Vitam.
Luminate and Nielsen show major discrepancies when it comes to animated films, sometimes with figures differing by a factor of two, especially in the cases of KPop Demon Hunters and Plankton: The Movie.
A film like KPop Demon Hunters, which really took off well beyond its initial release window, is naturally at a disadvantage in my ranking, which focuses on the first 14 days after release. While this 14-day window is usually enough to give a good sense of what’s a hit and what’s a miss, some outliers slip through the cracks and end up far ahead of some better-ranked films.
There are no Apple TV+ films in this ranking. Its biggest two films of the first half of 2025, The Gorge (6.8M CVEs) and Fountain of Youth (6.3M CVEs) didn’t quite make the cut.
This ranking is bound to change quite a bit, as the second half of the year is typically when streaming services drop their biggest hits. It kicks off with Happy Gilmore 2, which looks poised to dethrone, or at least come very close to Moana 2, if the early numbers are any indication. But we’ll have to wait six months for my full annual review to see how it all plays out.
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📺 The Most-Watched Series on Streaming in the First Half of 2025
For the series, I had to address methodological biases from Nielsen, which combines viewership for all seasons of a show into a single figure, something Luminate avoids by distinguishing between individual seasons. To tackle this, I created several categories: new series released all at once (binge), new series released weekly, both based on Nielsen data and new seasons released binge-style and weekly, both based on Luminate data.
🆕 New Binge-Released Series
The surprising leader in the first half of 2025 is the British miniseries Adolescence, a true phenomenon that has exploded on Netflix both in the U.S. and worldwide.
A few things to note in this ranking:
The rankings are dominated by Netflix, which still releases the vast majority of its series in binge format. Amazon is increasingly adopting this approach as well, but its series like The Bondsman, On Call, and We Were Liars haven’t quite managed to break through in Nielsen’s data.
Luminate differs from Nielsen by ranking Sirens as the top launch of the first half of the year, ahead of Zero Day and Adolescence. Anything’s possible, no one really knows for sure! There’s also a significant gap between Nielsen and Luminate when it comes to The Waterfront.
🆕 New Weekly-Released Series
When it comes to weekly series, it’s a bit of a wild card—numbers vary widely between Nielsen and Luminate. Two striking examples are The Pitt (on HBO Max), where figures differ by nearly double, and MobLand (on Paramount+), which also shows huge discrepancies between the two sources.
It’s worth noting that Good American Family managed to break through on Nielsen but not on Luminate—something very rare, as Luminate’s methodology tends to be more “permissive.” Conversely, a few new weekly series found success on Luminate but not on Nielsen, such as Stick on Apple TV+ (averaging 8.2M CVEs per week), Happy Face on Paramount+ (4.7M CVEs), and Daredevil: Born Again on Disney+ (4.6M CVEs).
🆕 Returning Series
For returning series with new seasons, I rely solely on Luminate and the results surprised me quite a bit. According to their data, The Night Agent Season 2 attracted more viewers than Squid Game Season 3. It’s not impossible. After all, Squid Game saw a significant drop in viewership from Season 1 to 2, and again from 2 to 3. Plus, as a South Korean series, it might not have the same broad appeal as a U.S. action drama. Still, it’s definitely surprising.
The Bear Season 4 is the only returning series outside of Netflix released binge-style in my dataset this year, one of the few non-Netflix shows to consistently do so year after year. Also worth mentioning is the absolute flop of FUBAR Season 2 which has been canceled last week unsurprisingly.
Finally, let’s wrap up with new seasons of weekly series and once again, Luminate surprises. According to their data, 1923 Season 2 is dominating by a wide margin, while Nielsen reports nearly half the audience. Paramount+ is truly the only service where Nielsen and Luminate differ this much—it’s quite amusing.
Notably, Severance and Andor Season 2, two of the most critically acclaimed series so far this year, posted fairly modest numbers on Luminate, consistent with Nielsen’s data. This is quite the contrast to the buzz and online discussions they’ve generated.
With Wednesday and Stranger Things (among others!) set to return later this year, get ready, there’s sure to be some serious movement ahead and to follow all about that, make sure to subscribe to the newsletter!
That’s a wrap on this overview of U.S. streaming audiences for the first half of 2025. We’ll be back in a few days with a deep dive into the latest global Netflix streaming numbers!
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