Netflix is ringing in the holidays with another slate of Christmas-themed movies, but while this year’s crop of films is a bit less starry than last year’s, viewership is in pretty lockstep as subscribers flock to small-to-mid-budget rom-coms that channel the spirit of the season.
Netflix kicked off its 2025 holiday slate with the Alicia Silverstone and Oliver Hudson-led “A Merry Little Ex-Mas,” which debuted as the No. 2 most-watched English-language Netflix movie with 12.8 million views in its first five days during the week of Nov. 10, behind only “Frankenstein,” which debuted on Netflix just a week earlier. While “A Merry Little Ex-Mas” slipped down to 9 million views in its second week, Minka Kelly’s “Champagne Problems” picked up the baton as it debuted as the top movie during the week of Nov. 17 with 20.5 million views.
“Champagne Problems” slid down to the No. 2 spot with 14.4 million views the following week as “Jingle Bell Heist,” starring Olivia Holt and Connor Swindells, debuted at the top of the streamer’s movie list with 19.3 million views, while “A Merry Little Ex-Mas” stayed on the top 10 movies list with 4 million views in its third week.
The pattern continued when the Alexandra Breckenridge-led “My Secret Santa” closed out the streamer’s holiday movie slate with 18.1 million views in its debut week. “My Secret Santa” was the streamer’s top movie for the week of Dec. 1, pushing “Jingle Bell Heist” to second place with 10.4 million views, while “Champagne Problems” scored 5.2 million views in its third week on the streamer.
The cumulative debut viewership for this year’s four holiday movies totaled 70.7 million views, shy of the 81.2 million views tallied up by the debut of last year’s slate of four holiday movies, “Meet Me Next Christmas,” “The Merry Gentlemen,” “Hot Frosty” and “Our Little Secret,” though the Lindsay Lohan/Kristen Chenoweth-led “Our Little Secret” was responsible for a good deal of those views.
While the Christina Milian-starring “Meet Me Last Christmas” debuted to 18.1 million views and buzzy “Hot Frosty” and “The Merry Gentlemen” debuted to 16 and 14.7 million views, respectively, “Our Little Secret” doubled the viewership of both “Hot Frosty” and “The Merry Gentlemen” with 32.4 million views, standing as the biggest debut among both this and last year’s Christmas movies.
The bigger audience for “Our Little Secret” isn’t surprising, given its all-star cast featured Lohan and Chenoweth, as well as “Pretty Little Liars” alum Ian Harding and comedy legend Tim Meadows. While the rom-com brought in an impressive audience and longevity not usually achieved by the streamer’s holiday movies — “Our Little Secret” was in Netflix’s top 10 list for five weeks — that success likely came with a not-so-cheap price tag for its talent.
While not a typical holiday rom-com, 2024’s “Carry-On” is another standout from Netflix’s 2024 slate, debuting with an explosive 42 million views in its debut week. The Christmas-set action movie, which stars Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman, grew to become the streamer’s most-watched movie for the second half of 2024 — despite debuting in December — garnering 137.3 million views. Instead of adding onto that success however, Netflix, opted to go smaller this year, likely counting on “Carry-On” to catch repeat viewings this holiday season.
But the streamer kept nostalgia plays going this year with its stars, this time including Silverstone of “Clueless” fame and “Friday Night Light’s” Kelly, while trading Hallmark talent like Lacey Chabert, who starred in “Hot Frosty,” for in-house favorite Breckenridge, star of Netflix’s “Virgin River.”
In fact, Netflix seemed to offer just enough intrigue to entice viewers, who as the holidays roll closer, have an appetite for a 90-minute, corny-but-cozy holiday movie.
“All Her Fault” tops Peacock’s original series launches
The Sarah Snook-led mystery thriller, based on Andrea Mara’s novel of the same name, has become Peacock’s most-watched original series launch to date. “All Her Fault” reached 46 million hours watched in its first three weeks, according to internal data from NBCUniversal.
The series also ranked among the top five streaming original seasons in the U.S. in its first three weeks of availability, per preliminary data from Nielsen.
The Indiana-Ohio State becomes most-watched Big Ten championship game on record
Concluding a big few days for college football was the Indiana-Ohio State game on Saturday, which broke records for Fox as the most-watched Big Ten Championship Game on record with 18.33 million viewers. Indiana’s win, which peaked at 19.99 viewers from 11:00-11:15 p.m. ET, also ranked as the most-watched college football telecast of championship weekend on any network.
“Flip Side” hits series ratings high
The Jaleel White-hosted game show from CBS Media Ventures scored a series viewership high and soared 15% from the same week last year, averaging 1.21 million total viewers during the week of Nov. 15, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day panel figures. “Flip Side” is now averaging 1.17 million total viewers this season, boosting it to rank as the No. 4 most-watched syndicated game show, behind “Jeopardy!” “Wheel of Fortune” and “Family Feud.”
The series also ranks as syndication’s fastest-growing game show, with “Flip Side” growing its total viewers by 13% year-over-year.
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