What Movies Did People Stream Most This Summer?

As TV endures a sleepy summer — save for a couple of splashy releases like Peacock’s “Love Island USA” and Netflix’s “I Will Find You”— the list of titles cycling through the top streaming movies has been much more varied, with box office hits thriving at home.

TheWrap crunched the numbers from Nielsen’s streaming charts for June through mid-July (the streaming rankings face about a one-month delay) to find out which movies people watched most on streaming this summer, and saw Disney/Pixar’s “Hopper” tally 2.66 billion viewing cumulative minutes on Disney+ from July 1 through July 12, standing as the interval’s top streaming movie.

“Hoppers,” which debuted in theaters in March grossed nearly $400 million worldwide at the box office, was just one of several theatrical releases to find big success once they hit streaming. Amazon MGM’s “Project Hail Mary,” Disney/20th Century Studios’ “Avatar: Fire and Ash” and Amazon MGM’s “The Sheep Detectives” also landed within the summer’s top five streaming movies, each tallying over a billion cumulative viewing minutes.

A commonality among them? Long theatrical windows.

The strong numbers for these releases — and the fact that they’re dominating the streaming movie landscape — prove that longer theatrical release windows aren’t hurting these films’ performance on streaming platforms. Just look at “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” which had an especially long window due to the mountains of money the franchise makes at the box office, which hit Disney+ in late June, six months after its Dec. 19 debut.

“Fire and Ash,” the third movie in Cameron’s “Avatar” franchise that ended its box office run with $1.5 billion, racked up 1.7 billion minutes viewed in just three weeks, coming out as the No. 4 most-watched streaming movie during June and part of July.

The same can be said for “Hoppers” and “Project Hail Mary” (which grossed $684 million worldwide), which both embraced a full three-month theatrical window but still managed to make a splash on streaming, straddling the line of staying relevant for those who didn’t catch the movie in theaters, as well as giving fans who did enough of a breather before they revisit a new favorite.

“Project Hail Mary” also double-dipped — the film made its streaming debut first on MGM+, then on Prime Video a few weeks later.

This falls in line with a trend across the film industry that has seen studios shift to a 45-day theatrical window, with Universal vowing to extend its minimum window for all films starting in 2027. The proof is in the pudding here — a longer window not only allows for bigger box office, but also has no adverse effect on streaming viewership.

The outlier here is “The Sheep Detectives,” less of a box office hit (it made $131 million against a budget of $75 million) but a critical darling, which had shorter one-and-a-half month window from its May 8 theatrical release. But Amazon MGM made a pivot when the film fell off at the box office, pushing it to streaming earlier to take advantage of the positive word of mouth.

It wasn’t just trickle down from the box office that generated streaming success; several of the top movies are earlier movies from franchises that were about to debut new installments. “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” Tom Holland’s first solo “Spider-Man” film, tallied up 518 million viewing minutes across two weeks in early July ahead of the “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” premiere on July 31, and viewing for previous “Toy Story” movies spiked ahead of the “Toy Story 5” theatrical debut in June.

Part of the “Spider-Man” spike happened on Netflix, with both “Spider-Man: Far From Home” and “Spider-Man: Homecoming” landing in the No. 3 and 4 spots on the films list.

But while Netflix — which is facing a slower season on the TV side — doesn’t release its films in theaters often, it still found success against the box office heavyweights across a variety of genres.

Romcoms “Voicemails to Isabelle” and “Office Romance,” Eric Andre comedy “Little Brother” and Millie Bobby Brown actioner “Enola Holmes 3” scored solid viewership, while the streamer’s buzzy true crime documentary, “Maternal Instinct,” skyrocketed to the No. 2 spot — just behind “Hoppers” — for the interval with nearly 2 billion minutes viewed. “72 Hours” and “The Last House” have also performed well later into the summer.

And while “The Devil Wears Prada 2” didn’t make it within the interval as it debuted on Disney+ and Hulu in late July — we’ll expect to see it hit Nielsen charts later this month — the legacy sequel made waves as the biggest live-action movie premiere on the platforms since “Deadpool & Wolverine” with 15.2 million global viewers in five days.

Notably, it was Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video that were home to the top 15 streaming movies, though this interval cuts off before Universal Studios hit “Obsession” made its way to Peacock on July 17. And that’s not even mentioning “The Odyssey,” which is still shattering box office records and will land on the NBCUniversal streamer later this year.

Shark Week takes a bite out of cable

Shark Week scored its strongest performance in seven years, boosting Discovery Channel to rank as the No. 1 primetime cable network for the week among adults, men and women 25-54. 

Across Shark Week prime telecasts for the week, the programming averaged a 0.77 rating among adults 25-54, according to live-plus-three-day figures, marking the largest year-over-year increase in 13 years and the first year of ratings growth since 2023.

ESPN scores WNBA viewership win

Saturday’s WNBA game between the Indiana Fever and the Chicago Sky averaged 2.6 million viewers on ABC, ranking as ESPN’s No. 2 most-watched WNBA game ever — a milestone the network hit for the second consecutive week.

Viewership for the match was up 79% compared to last year’s ABC regular season average, and, through 22 games, the WNBA on ESPN networks is averaging 1.3 million viewers, up 5% year-over-year.

HGTV ratings milestone

“Ugliest House in America” Season 8 is off to a strong start. The HGTV show scored notable ratings for Episode 2 on July 27, with a 0.72 rating among adults 25-54 and a 1.04 rating among women 25-54, according to Nielsen live-plus-three-day viewing figures. This marks the highest-rated episode for the latter demo in series history.

The ratings boosted the show to triple-digit increases — 260% and 353%, to be exact — over the previous year.

ICYMI:

• “The Last House,” the sci-fi thriller movie starring Greta Lee and Wagner Moura, tallied 27.5 million views on Netflix in its opening weekend
• “The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare” remained Netflix’s most-watched TV series with 10.6 million views in its second week
• Hallmark+’s “Paris Is Always a Good Idea,” garnered nearly as many viewers as the streamer’s biggest hits. Read our interview with president Darren Abbott about the company’s big bet on streaming here