Prime Video’s wild card playoff game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens has smashed records for the streamer with an average audience of 22.07 million viewers – its largest ever.

Saturday’s viewership figure, which is based on data from Nielsen’s panel-only measurement, marks NFL on Prime’s best-ever average audience, topping the previous 17.3 million viewers during Dec. 5’s Greenbay Packers and Detroit Lions match-up by nearly five million viewers, or a 28% increase. It’s also a 67% increase from the 2024 Thursday Night Football season average of 13.2 million and a 7% increase from the the 2023 Saturday Night wild card matchup between the Chargers and Jaguars, which drew 20.61 million viewers.

However, it marked a 3% decrease from last year’s Saturday night wild card matchup between the Dolphins and Chiefs, which had 22.86 million average viewers.

In addition, the Steelers-Ravens game attracted the most concurrent viewers ever to the service – with an all-time high of 24.7 million during the 9:00-9:15 p.m. ET portion of the second quarter. 

The Steelers-Ravens averaged 3.98 million viewers ages 18 to 34 – a new all-time high for the NFL on Prime and 14% increase from the 3.48 million during the Vikings Eagles game on Sept. 14, 2023 – and 9.54 million ages 18 to 49 – a new all-time high and 24% higher than the 7.69 million who watched the Cowboys-Giants game on Sept. 26.

Meanwhile, Prime Video’s NFL wild card pregame show averaged 2.03 million viewers on Saturday night while facing overlap from an earlier wild card game, marking an increase of 33% over the 2024 season average of TNF’s pregame show “TNF Tonight” of 1.53 million.

The wild card “Nightcap” postgame show averaged 3.54 million on Saturday night, marking an 74% increase of +74% over the 2024 season average of 2.04 million.

The post Steelers-Ravens Wild Card Game Scores Prime Video’s Largest NFL Audience With 22.07 Million Viewers appeared first on TheWrap.

Harlan Coben’s series “Missing You” held onto the top spot on Netflix’s most-watched shows list, outpacing the debut of “American Primeval.”

After scoring the No. 1 spot on Netflix’s top 10 most-watched shows last week as the limited series debuted to 21.7 million views, “Missing You” maintained its top spot on the list despite dropping to 15.2 million views during the week of Jan. 6. Viewership for “Missing You” outpaced the launch of Western series “American Primeval,” which took the No. 2 spot on the list with 10.4 million views.

Still, “American Primeval” racked up a bigger audience during the week than docuseries “Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action,” which took third place on the English TV list with 7.7 million views, as well the debut of WWE’s “Monday Night Raw,” which took the No. 4 place with 5.9 views for the week after its Jan. 6 debut.

“Departure,” which was added to Netflix’s library at the start of 2025, continued to gain traction, with its first season becoming the week’s No. 5 most-watched show with 3.6 million views while Season 2 came in ninth place with 2.4 million views. “Virgin River” was the week’s sixth most-watched English show as it scored 3.1 million views, surpassing viewership for “Gabriel Iglesias: Legend of Fluffy,” which took seventh place with 2.9 million views, and “Black Doves” Season 1, which came in eighth place with 2.8 million views.

“Squid Game” Season 2 kept its winning streak going as Netflix’s most-watched title of the week for the third week in a row, this time clocking in at 26.3 million views. Since its Dec. 26 premiere, “Squid Game” Season 2 has tallied up 152.5 million views, ranking as the No. 2 most-watched non-English show ever — behind Season 1 — as well as the third most-watched season on Netflix ever behind “Squid Game” Season 1 and “Wednesday.”

“Squid Game” Season 1 also continued to see a viewing boost amidst the Season 2 release, with Season 1 taking the No. 3 spot on the week’s top non-English TV list with 8.7 million views.

On the film front, “The Secret Life of Pets 2” was the most-watched English movie of the week with 15 million views (“The Secret Life of Pets” came in fourth place with 6.2 million views). Holiday-themed thriller “Carry On” took second place with 7.2 million views while “Ma” took third place with 7 million views this week.

The post Harlan Coben’s ‘Missing You’ Reigns Over ‘American Primeval’ Debut With 15.2 Million Views, Tops Netflix TV Top 10 appeared first on TheWrap.

“Everything we see in the years to come will be compared to 2025, not to 2022 or to 2019,” one studio executive told TheWrap.“This is going to be the new benchmark.”

The struggles of rebuilding after the pandemic, with audiences slowly returning in 2021 and studios navigating production backlogs in 2022, tainted the long-term data about moviegoing habits, even as films like “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Avatar: The Way of Water” proved that Hollywood could produce a global hit as huge as they did before 2020.

Then the double labor strikes derailed hopes that 2023 or 2024 would be the first “normal” year, leading to delays that contributed to last May becoming the worst at the box office in a quarter century. The mantra of “Survive ’til ’25” that flowed through the film industry was particularly true for theaters, which need consistent releases above all else.

That consistency will begin with a slow start this weekend with the Sony comedy “One of Them Days” and the Universal/Blumhouse horror film “Wolf Man,” alongside an expansion of A24’s top Oscar contender ”The Brutalist.” In February, Marvel Studios will provide the big tentpole of the first quarter with “Captain America: Brave New World.”

Assuming no major setbacks in 2025, Gower Street Analytics is projecting a domestic box office total of $9.7 billion, up from the $9.04 billion recorded by Comscore in 2023.

While that’s still short of the $11.3 billion recorded before inflation adjustment in 2019, exhibitors tell TheWrap that a $10 billion year is not off the table, especially considering that the slate for the second half of the year could see several more additions. This time last year, Disney had not yet announced that it was adding “Moana 2” to its slate, and that film has made nearly $400 million domestic and $900 million worldwide after five weekends.

But the extent of the optimism varies depending on whom you ask, Daniel Loria, SVP of content strategy at BoxOffice, said.

“I have heard multiple exhibitors say they believe it is not unrealistic that we could hit $10 billion,” Loria told TheWrap. “Studios and premium format execs think it is closer to $9 billion. At BoxOffice, we’ve taken all those varying perspectives into account for our domestic projections, which we put at $9.3 billion to $9.7 billion.”

One reason why there’s so much optimism among exhibitors is that the 2025 slate should be free of the weeks-long droughts that have plagued theaters over the past three years. Take 2022, for example, which saw the mid-summer highs of “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Jurassic World: Dominion” give way to a deep early autumn slump, including a September where grosses fell to the lowest level since 1996.

One studio executive believes that the industry will be able to put such slumps behind them as the frequency of theatrical releases increases. Currently, Comscore estimates there will be 110 films released wide in 2,000 North American theaters, more than the 101 released in 2023. The executive believes that count could increase to 120 or more.

“If you look at the first quarter, there’s a lot of volume,” the executive said. “We haven’t seen that in a few years. You have breadth, volume and a wide variety of anticipated tentpoles, and that’s everything we need to figure out what the new normal is and how the audience is responding.”

Earlier this month, the National Association of Theater Owners released a report that outlined other reasons for optimism. Frequent moviegoers are on the rise, as evidenced by a 12% increase in theater loyalty program members in 2024 to 112 million nationwide, the report showed.

NATO also cited a survey from Mintel that found that 85% of moviegoers surveyed plan to go to theaters more frequently in the next 12 months than they did in the previous 12. Eager to make a good impression with those moviegoers, the top eight circuits in the U.S. and Canada are investing a combined $2.2 billion in updates and refurbishments to their multiplexes.

“As theatrical exhibition heads into 2025, it does so bolstered by consumer excitement for movies on the big screen, a continuing and strengthening commitment to serve the movie-going public and enhance the experience for all, and an increased movie production slate across all important genres to ensure that there is something for everyone at the cinema,” NATO’s report read.

Falling short of 2010s box office levels before inflation adjustment would be a glass-half-empty scenario. Loria noted that while the recovery process for the film industry is progressing steadily, the post-strike slowdown in green lighting projects adopted over the past year will still impact the number of wide releases. So will the wave of consolidation that has already hit theaters with Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox. That could continue to take a toll under an M&A-friendly Trump administration.

“Even in the best-case scenario, we’re still not going to be back to pre-pandemic numbers, and a big reason for that is that there’s one less studio putting out a full slate,“ Loria said. “That’s going to stretch out how long it takes for numbers to rise.”

The year ahead

The opening quarter of 2025 also reflects that “half-full or half-empty” question when it comes to the potential for increased numbers. On the one hand, the sheer frequency of films in the opening months is far greater than the last two years, reducing the possibility of a drought.

“Captain America: Brave New World,” will be a big test of the MCU’s ability to get fans wary of the franchise’s post-“Avengers: Endgame” inconsistency back on board ahead of the return of Robert Downey Jr. in “Avengers: Doomsday” next year.

February will also showcase lower budget films like Sony/StudioCanal’s “Paddington in Peru” and Universal/87North’s “Love Hurts,” which marks the first lead role for Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan after his big return to Hollywood in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

On the “half-empty” side, the March slate does not have the tentpole power of years past. Films like “Dune: Part Two,” “Creed III” and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” have all launched to strong starts in recent years. In 2025, the highest profile March release will be Disney’s remake of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” a film whose trailer has been negatively received. The film risks being a flop for the entertainment giant after a 2024 in which all of its major films dodged such a fate.

In their place will be a series of lower-budget original and auteur-driven films trying to find an audience, including Warner Bros.’ “Mickey 17,” director Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to his historic Best Picture winner “Parasite.” Robert De Niro will also star in the WB crime film “Alto Knights,” while “The Boys” star Jack Quaid tries out being an action lead playing a banker who can’t feel pain in Paramount’s “Novocaine.”

A very hot summer

This will lead into a second and third quarter where the glass could be overflowing. Ryan Coogler highlights April with the original Michael B. Jordan horror film “Sinners,” leading into a summer that includes the Marvel film “Thunderbolts*,” remakes of Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” and DreamWorks’ “How to Train Your Dragon,” Pixar’s “Elio,” the horror threequel “28 Years Later” and Tom Cruise’s potential adieu to Ethan Hunt in “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”

Then in July is the big one: “Superman.” The film carries very high stakes for Warner Bros. as it will determine whether the studio has a potential king franchise with James Gunn’s DC Studios. So far, things are looking up for the Son of Krypton, as the teaser trailer earned a Warner Bros. record 250 million views in its first 24 hours, a sign of widespread interest even with major head-to-head competition like “Jurassic World: Rebirth” and Marvel’s “Fantastic Four: The First Steps” also hitting screens in July.

A big finish

After the summer, the big bucks should keep rolling in. September likely will bring a relative slowdown with demographic-specific titles like “The Conjuring: Last Rites,” “Saw XI” and “Downton Abbey 3” on the slate. But that will change in a big way in October with “Michael,” a biopic that Lionsgate hopes will reverse its fortunes after a terrible 2024 at the box office and which could challenge “Oppenheimer” for the highest-grossing biopic of all time.

That will lead into a final two months that should be just as big as the one theaters just enjoyed with the return of Elphaba and Glinda in Universal’s “Wicked: For Good,” followed by the Thanksgiving release of Disney’s “Zootopia 2.” Paramount, which provided young men with an alternative in 2024 with “Gladiator II,” will do so again with Glen Powell’s take on Stephen King’s “The Running Man,” which will likely be produced at a lower budget than the Ridley Scott legacyquel.

Closing out the year will be James Cameron’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” a sequel to the 2022 film “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which grossed $2.32 billion. While this third installment won’t have the advantage of a 13-year wait to build up hype, it is clear that moviegoers around the world are excited for more adventures in Pandora and will likely turn up en masse once again.

What could derail a big 2025?

The fact that many major titles are coming out in close proximity to each other is why theater owners feel like the rebound they’ve enjoyed in the second half of 2024 is just the beginning. But there is one thing that could crush all their hopes: another pandemic.

In recent months, health officials have warned about the spread of the H5N1 virus, also known as the “bird flu,” among cows across the United States and Canada. Dozens of cases have been reported in humans, but so far the virus has yet to mutate in a way that would make it highly contagious and transmittable among humans.

Still, epidemiologists have warned that the more the virus spreads among livestock unchecked, the greater the risk for farmers in proximity to those animals; and the more humans that get infected from those animals, the greater the chance of a dangerous mutation occurring and triggering another pandemic that could close theaters again.

When asked by TheWrap about his concerns over the bird flu, one theater owner said that he was aware and concerned about the virus, but couldn’t dwell on it.

“I mean, what can any of us in this industry do?” he said. “If it does happen, at least we have the social distancing and disinfecting protocols from COVID ready to go, but whether or not it gets bad enough that we have to close is out of our hands. But yeah, it would be beyond frustrating if it ever gets to that.”

For now, exhibitors are focusing on what they can control: improving moviegoer experience and auditorium quality, working with studios to market films directly to their loyalty members and taking advantage of the growing release slate to build momentum.

“At CinemaCon, [AMC CEO] Adam Aron was asked in a panel if the movie theater industry can survive being a $9 billion industry. After this year, we won’t have to worry about that question,” Loria said. “Now the active question is who can survive in a $10 billion industry, and can Hollywood and exhibitors keep the pie growing in the years to come to allow the business at large to remain sustainable?”

The post 2025 Should Finally Be the Year the Box Office Has Been Waiting For – Will It Be? appeared first on TheWrap.

The Palisades Fire tore through a strangely contained beachfront corridor of Malibu last Tuesday night. Some people went out to dinner in Beverly Hills or went for drinks at the Malibu Country Mart and could never go home again. From Carbon Canyon Road down to Topanga Canyon Road, it’s a mile-plus of utter devastation with a few odd exceptions. 

Driving down Pacific Coast Highway from northern Malibu on Sunday evening, all you see for miles down the coast is pale blue sky and deep blue ocean reflecting off the cliffside red rocks. The National Guard has taken up position along the beach. 

The Malibu Pier, all wood and fully flammable, is standing intact. 

But just after the Malibu Pier, between Carbon Canyon and Rambla Pacifico Street, all is twisted metal and ash. In the blackened hulks of these structures, there’s absolutely nothing to be found. Not a photo. Not a promotional flyer left from a mailbox. Absolutely nothing. 

A few houses were oddly spared in this mile-long rampage. 

I talked to a crew from Orange County Alameda Station. They’ve been here on PCH since Tuesday, making sure that there are no gas lines or other embers that can flare up. An acrid smell hangs in the air. Ripped and torn power lines snake along the sidewalk. 

Duke’s restaurant, which initially was thought to be burned, stands intact. The Getty Villa stands up on its hill with National Guard jeeps stationed in front of it on PCH.  The famed Gladstones is standing. The fancy Bel-Air Bay Club is wounded but upright. 

The devastation picks up right after Duke’s all the way down the coast toward the Pacific Palisades. A tree branch stuck in the air, a random metal beam juts out of the ground, askew. And almost nothing else. Everything is flattened up to the terra-cotta pots that sit out on what was the sidewalk in front of the houses. 

And all along the winding road of PCH, across from the beach, the houses are untouched. 

The post The Remains of Malibu: Ashes and Embers in the Sand appeared first on TheWrap.

To explore this trade-off, Parrot analyzed the potential value “The Umbrella Academy” could have brought to Peacock if it had been available there instead of licensed to Netflix, using Parrot Analytics’ Streaming Economics insights.

Produced by Universal Content Productions, a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, “The Umbrella Academy” premiered on Netflix in 2019 and became one of its most in-demand shows, cultivating a dedicated fanbase. In Q3 2024, following the release of its fourth and final season, the series was Netflix’s second-highest contributor to subscriber acquisition revenue, accounting for approximately 0.8% of acquisition revenue for the quarter.

If available on Peacock in Q3, NBCU’s streaming platform, the show would have ranked fifth in acquisition share, driving 2.1% of new subscribers during the same period. This would place it close to Peacock’s top performers, like NBC’s flagship series “The Office,” which accounted for 2.5% of acquisitions.

Based on the shared audience between “The Umbrella Academy” and other platform’s catalogs, Parrot estimates that the audience driven to Peacock by the show would come mostly from Netflix, where the first three seasons were released, Max and Amazon Prime Video. Additionally, “The Umbrella Academy””would have been particularly valuable for attracting a younger, predominantly female audience — two demographics Peacock (and all the other major SVODs) struggles to engage, according to Parrot Analytics Audience Solutions.

The decision to license or retain the show involves numerous factors. While “The Umbrella Academy” could boost Peacock’s subscriber growth, the first season premiered before Peacock’s launch, and its ongoing popularity on Netflix generates rising licensing revenues for NBCUniversal. The question remains: would the show’s revenue potential on Peacock outweigh its lucrative licensing earnings?

The post Subscriber Gains vs. Licensing Cash: What Peacock Could Learn from ‘The Umbrella Academy’ | Charts appeared first on TheWrap.

TheWrap reached out to its readers and industry contacts to collect some of these personal stories. Here are some of them, in their own words:

Brad Peyton, Filmmaker

Brad Peyton is the director of blockbuster films like “San Andreas” (2015), “Rampage” (2018) and “Atlas” (2024). He has lived in California for over a decade, with a house located in Altadena.

The devastation that ravaged Altadena hit close to home for director Brad Peyton, whose house was miraculously spared from destruction but who spent years imagining ways California could be torn apart by disasters in films like “San Andreas,” which starred Dwayne Johnson and chronicled the impact and aftermath of a 9.1 magnitude earthquake on Los Angeles.

“When I drove up to my house, the house next to me was on fire and the fire department was there, and the house behind me was completely gone. The whole lot was just charred rubble,” Peyton told TheWrap. When he and his fiancé returned to their neighborhood on Wednesday morning to grab more valuables, they decided to take a walk around their block. That’s when the enormity of the destruction set in.

“It was just like whole streets gone, people just out watering ashes, people trying to recover whatever they could, fire trucks shooting around you, explosions going off, big, billowing, fast-moving black pillars of smoke a couple blocks away. It was still all happening,” he recalled.

Peyton brought images of city-wide destruction to the screen in “San Andreas” and 2018’s “Rampage,” but he told TheWrap that seeing the L.A. wildfires first-hand has given him a different perspective on making a disaster movie.

“If I did it again now, I’d have much more to say about it,” he said, noting that the “human story” is much more personal. “There’s stuff that you couldn’t imagine, is basically the thing that’s striking to me. You never imagine the firefighters can’t get water. I’m not in any way pointing blame, I just thought there would be enough firefighters, enough water and enough police, and the response would be quick. But I stood there looking at this elementary school in our neighborhood burn to the ground as fire trucks just drove by it because they couldn’t save it.”

He saw a video of a man screaming at a fire, only for a wild bunny to jump into his arms. He was struck by the notion that the fire was so bad that a wild animal ran to a predator for safety. Hollywood disaster movies can only imagine so much.

Peyton also acknowledged that an industry still reeling from the effects of the pandemic, contraction and last year’s dual strikes just got dealt another massive blow, and he worries some in the industry will give up and leave.

“I think it was desperate before, and I think it’s going to get very dire now,” the filmmaker said. ”I don’t want there to be a creative brain drain, where people just get sick of this place and they leave. One of the things I’ve really liked about living in California is there are so many artists, there are so many creative people. But what I see right now is a lot of people going, ‘That’s it.’”

The Toronto-native director said he hopes people “band together and hold on,” but admitted “you can only take so many serious hits before you get knocked down.”

Another fear of Peyton’s: the insurance fallout for citizens across Los Angeles. The director had been battling his insurance company for four months over a flood in his house before the fires, and he called the situation “frightening.” He said despite “doing everything by the book,” the insurance company repeatedly denied his claim and it’s still in dispute as he, his fiancé and their three elderly dogs have been living in hotels and Airbnbs.

“There’s no humanity in the process whatsoever,” he said. “I just realized, if they’ve been this way with me over a flood in one house, what are they going to be like in this situation?”

– By Adam Chitwood

Kathy Pittman and Ryder Pittman, and ‘The Honda That Lived’

“Be the Honda,” Kathy Pittman says. “Get up, get started and move forward.” 

For the next few years, she and her 19-year-old son Ryder will be following the inspiration of his trusty single-stroke dirt bike, which miraculously started up after the Eaton Fire swept through their neighborhood last week and destroyed their Altadena home.

The video of that joyous moment – a boy and his severely melted, but still-running, dirt bike – was captured by a new pair of Meta glasses and heard ‘round the world, with nearly 400,000 likes and 77,000 shares on TikTok.

Pittman and his mother chose to evacuate at the onset of the Eaton fire in the pre-dawn hours as embers rained fearsomely down on their property. They spent 10 minutes grabbing essentials and beelined for the Rose Bowl parking lot, never expecting that their home was in imminent danger of burning down.

The teen and his father (who works in the music industry and is divorced from his mother) raced back to the property and were able to move some vehicles to safety. But the old dirt bike “was not as valuable as everything else I had – I did have a lot of memories on that bike, I wish I could’ve saved it.”

With no water pressure to the house, father and son were rushing buckets from the pool to put out hot-spots before it all became too much. Pittman stashed the Honda and his father “made the executive decision” to run from the onrushing embers, smoke, heat – and soon flames – that had already engulfed the next-door-neighbor’s house.

When they were finally able to return, Pittman picked up the bike and gave it a kick.

@augietheyeti If this doesn’t prove that Honda is made to last, I don’t know what will!! WAIT FOR IT @Ryder Pittman @Honda Clips @hondafolife #lafire #hondabike #apocalypsebike ♬ original sound – Augie The Yeti

“We’re looking around, and it’s nothing but destruction,” Kathy Pittman said. “We’re trying to see anything that made it, and then he picks up that bike – and we’re thinking, ‘There’s no way this thing is gonna start, it’s completely melted.’”

Despite its shredded and melted exterior, the Honda fired right up. Ryder says it’s possible that the bike is still rideable, but is probably not salvageable. Somehow, though, it may contribute to the bigger salvage job.

“It’s just so much joy,” Kathy Pittman said. “I’ve probably watched it a thousand times, as you’re going through this you’re looking for anything hopeful. … You have no idea how happy I was. Looking at him in that pure bliss, glee, raw moment. We haven’t been able go get it out yet. Him and his dad are talking about framing this bike.”

For now, mother and son are living with Ryder’s dad, who has remarried.

“Thankfully, my father and my stepmother are both incredibly amazing, kind and devoted people, who have given us access to their house, however long we need,” he said, adding cheekily: “Or until we wear out our welcome.”

Like all Southern Californians who have lost their homes, the Pittmans have a long road ahead to rebuild their lives. Exhausted from shopping all day Sunday for supplies, they still sounded hopeful that they would do just that in a few years’ time.

So it bears repeating:

“Be the Honda. Get up, get started and move forward.”

– By Josh Dickey

Shannon Losinski-Holdt, attorney and producer

Losinski-Holdt has served in the legal affairs departments at NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. and Netflix, specializing as a production attorney. 

A phone call might have saved Shannon Losinski-Holdt’s life. On the evening of Jan. 7, waiting for her husband to arrive at their home in Altadena, she picked up a call from a friend asking if she had evacuated from the fires. She assumed the friend was talking about the blaze that was rapidly burning through the Pacific Palisades, only to discover that another one had ignited in the hills above her home and was rapidly approaching. 

“I opened my curtains, and the fire was right there outside my front window,” she told TheWrap. 

Like thousands of other Altadena residents, the speed of the fire’s spread blindsided her, leaving her with little time to gather her most important documents and belongings. It wasn’t until days later that she was able to get back to her neighborhood to find that her worst fears had been realized: her home was destroyed.

Four days later, it was Losinski-Holdt’s 38th birthday. She tried to celebrate it as best she could with her husband and her closest friends, including producer Chelsea Fenton and development executive Miguel Berg, whom she met as students at Chapman University’s Film/TV production MFA program. A friend brought a cake, and since they didn’t have any candles, they used a leftover one from Hanukkah.

“I’ve fought for all of my friends at different points in their lives and to have that return to you in a moment where you never thought you would ever need it… I can’t describe what that feels like,” she said through tears. 

Since moving from Montana to start her career in showbiz, Losinski-Holdt has had to navigate Hollywood’s growing instability, weathering layoffs at multiple top studios including most recently Netflix. She got a job last year at a media consulting firm and was looking for another opportunity to work in production again in 2025, holding on to hopes that Hollywood’s recent contraction following the strikes would relent.

“Everyone was saying ‘Survive ‘til ‘25, and now here we are in 2025 and now we’re just trying to survive at all,” she said. “There’s just this incredible community of creative people that we’ve become a part of, people who have invested so much and fought so hard to keep being a part of it through the strikes and the layoffs and all of it. Our bank accounts are probably the lowest that they had ever been, and now it’s all gone, and we have nothing left to start over with.”

Everyone was saying ‘Survive ‘til ‘25, and now here we are in 2025 and now we’re just trying to survive at all.”

-Shannon Losinski-Holdt

For now, Losinski-Holdt is at a friend’s home in Valley Village with her husband, Justus, and her dog, Hank, filling out FEMA forms and trying to recover from the emotional shock of the past week. Her friends set up a GoFundMe page to support her, with a little over $6,000 raised at time of writing.

With the Eaton Fire still not extinguished, she hasn’t had a lot of time to think about what’s next, but she is preparing to forge forward

“If there’s anything that has prepared me for crisis management, it is making a movie,” she said. “I want to fight for myself to figure out how to reclaim anything from this disaster. I want to figure out how to use my skills to help my community. This has nothing to do with entertainment law, but I’m a fast learner, and there’s nobody out there who wants to fight this more than me.”

-By Jeremy Fuster

Samantha Rose Baldwin, actress

Samantha Rose Baldwin is an actress who starred in 2022’s “Gossip Girl.” She risked everything to save her cat, Kitty, from the flames. This is her story in her own words.

After recently returning to LA from New York, where I was most notably known for my episode of Max’s “Gossip Girl” reboot, I now find myself at the Chateau Marmont in one of their creative union-comped bungalows for the displaced. Here, I’m most notably known as being  the girl featured in the Daily Mail for rescuing her cat from the Pacific Palisades wildfire — and not being Leighton Meester, the person you typically think of when you read “Gossip Girl.”

I woke on Tuesday, Jan. 7 to the sun shining and a light breeze in the air, oblivious to what the day would hold, and got myself dolled up to meet a friend in West Hollywood for brunch only for my drive to be interrupted by a very worried call from my dad. A wildfire had broken out, and now he was evacuating children from the school where he works as a security guard. Immediately, I rushed back to our Palisades apartment to evacuate him and my 10-year old cat, a tortie affectionately known as Kitty.  

What should have been a 28-minute drive turned into a two-hour ordeal as Palisades was engulfed in black smoke. Less than a mile from my house, I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic while firetrucks crawled toward the encroaching fire and plumes of smoke swallowed the skyline. With my GPS indicating another two hours still to go, I hid my car away on a side street and ran the remaining distance down Sunset Boulevard with my cardigan wrapped around my face to protect against the smoke.  

I made it home to find that Kitty wasn’t in one of her usual spots, leading to a 20- minute search against the clock while my loved ones anxiously tracked my location on their phones. Finally finding Kitty hidden deep inside our couch, I wrapped her in a blanket, shoved her in her carrier backpack and ran outside, hoping I’d beaten the flames. I hadn’t.  

In the time it took to find Kitty, the area between me and my car was overtaken by flames and getting back to it was no longer an option. My father chose to stay behind and help the firefighters, so I ran through the gridlocked traffic, dodging flaming palm fronds as they rained from the sky as if I were in a minefield. I called my mother to tell her I loved her, fearing for both my life and Kitty’s.  

Somehow, I reached the ocean, where I reunited with my dad — the salty air providing brief respite from the smoke, allowing me to catch my breath from behind my makeshift bandana-mask for the first time in what felt like hours. An ABC 7 news van in the Gladstone’s parking lot provided water and a phone charger to update our loved ones. In exchange, I recounted what we’d just endured to an ABC 7 reporter.

Since then, I’ve returned to the wreckage. By absolute miracle, I recovered my car — and remain hopeful about the state of our apartment building. As one of the “lucky ones,” I’ve used  the unexpected attention from the initial ABC 7 story to support IATSE’s Local 80 donation drive and Feed Play Love’s animal boarding efforts, which has offered me a renewed sense of purpose and peace amidst the devastation. 

My heart breaks for those who lost everything in the Palisades and Eaton Fires, and I’m deeply grateful for what has been spared. As the winds pick up again, all I can hope for is the safety of our community and for the continued sense of newfound camaraderie that has  emerged from the flames and graced my fellow Angelenos.

-By Samantha Rose Baldwin

A Mother Tries to Save Her Son

Shelley Sykes says she made a desperate attempt to save her son Rory Sykes, who as a boy challenged by blindness and cerebral palsy made several media appearances and motivational speeches, from his cottage on their Malibu property as the roof began to smolder.

“I couldn’t put out the cinders on his roof with a hose because the water was switched off by Las Virgenes Municipal Water,” she wrote. “Even the 50 brave fire fighters had no water all day!” she wrote on X.

She “couldn’t stop the flames taking over,” and couldn’t lift or move the 32-year-old out because of her broken arm – so she ran for help. When she returned with emergency responders, Rory Sykes had already succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning.

“It is with great sadness that I have to announce the death of my beautiful son @Rorysykes to the Malibu fires yesterday,” Sykes wrote, adding that he was born in Great Britain and had been living in Australia, but only recently relocated to the U.S. She said Sykes had his own cottage on the family’s 17-acre Mount Malibu estate, which burnt down on Jan. 8.

“[Rory] was born blind with cerebral palsy & had difficulty walking,” she wrote. “He overcame so much with surgeries & therapies to regain his sight & to be able to learn to walk. Despite the pain, he still enthused about traveling the world with me from Africa to Antarctica. [He] was a sought after inspirational speaker for [Tony Robbins] when he was only 8 years old.”

-By Josh Dickey

The post LA Fire Stories: In Their Own Words, Tales of Escape, Catastrophe and a Dirt Bike appeared first on TheWrap.

By the start of the fourth quarter, global venture capital investment in AI had already surpassed 2023 levels, with funding through September reaching $55.3 billion — $1.2 billion more than last year.

Heading into 2025, TheWrap spoke to eight AI experts, including Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela and MARZ chief executive Jonathan Bronfman, to get their predictions for how AI will play a role in tech and entertainment this year.

Their bets range from a studio releasing a hit movie made entirely with AI to a forecast that news organizations like The New York Times will score key legal victories in their battle to limit how AI companies scrape online content to build up their models.

Here’s a look at some of 2024’s biggest AI headlines:

• OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed company behind ChatGPT, took steps to shift out of its nonprofit status, a move that would make CEO Sam Altman $10.5 billion richer. (The company is valued at $157 billion after its latest funding round closed in October.) OpenAI’s push to become a for-profit company has received stiff criticism and legal pushback from Meta and Elon Musk, OpenAI’s most vocal critic, as 2024 comes to a close.
• In September, filmmaker James Cameron joined the board of directors of Stability AI, an artificial intelligence company that allows users to create images, as well as audio and visual content via text and image prompts.
• A number of news organizations — including the New York Post, Time Magazine and Vox — struck licensing deals with OpenAI, allowing the company to use content from the outlets in responses from ChatGPT.
• The media-AI relationship was not all roses, though: The New York Post and Dow Jones sued Perplexity AI, claiming the startup illegally ripped off a “massive amount” of its reporting. The New York Times sued Open AI and Microsoft for copyright infringement in December 2023 and also sent a “cease and desist” order to Perplexity, demanding the company stop using its content.

Here is where some industry leaders see AI heading in 2025:

AI and Hollywood

Jonathan Bronfman — CEO of MARZ, an Emmy-nominated VFX and AI company:

In my opinion, AI will start to permeate Hollywood in a meaningful way in 2025.

It may not fully replace departments, but it will enable almost every department from physical production crews to post production. AI in Hollywood is akin to a tarmac full of planes ready to take off. In 2025 we will see the first few get off the runway.

Cristóbal Valenzuela — CEO of Runway, a creator-focused AI company that specializes in AI video generated by text, video and image prompts:

The prospect of an AI-generated feature film achieving mainstream success feels increasingly inevitable. I strongly believe that by 2025 there will be at least one hit feature film made entirely with AI.

New forms of storytelling

Edward Saatchi — CEO of Fable Studio, the company behind Showrunner, an AI-powered streaming platform where users can create their own animated series:

By the end of 2025 you will be able to tell your TV, “Give me an episode of my favorite TV show” — for example, “Rick and Morty” — “where me and my kids are part of the story, and Rick recruits our family to go on a mission to save Morty.”

It’ll be immersive, fun and create whole new revenue opportunities for studios and show creators: rejuvenating old libraries, finding new artistic voices and monetizing fans who want to subscribe to make their own “fan scenes” and episodes.

In this future, the “story world builders” are king — and rich, detailed story worlds that fans can lose themselves in and create within will be the first trillion dollar IPs.

Yangbin Wang — CEO of Vobile, a SaaS company that leverages its AI technology for digital content protection and monetization services:

Generative AI is transforming the media and entertainment industry by fostering diverse and inclusive storytelling while reducing barriers to entry for creators. 

In 2025, AI-powered storytelling tools will become more accessible to a wide range of creators. We will also see the emergence of revenue-share models that allow rightsholders to be compensated, along with generative AI platforms that respect intellectual property and copyrighted works.

EEE (Enhanced Entertainment Efficiency) unlocks creativity

Sean King — general manager of media at Veritone, a leading enterprise AI software provider that helps a number of media and entertainment firms enhance and protect their content:

Over the next year, AI will become an indispensable part of the creative supply chain in the entertainment industry.

Studios and creative production teams will increasingly leverage AI to enhance efficiency across the entire creative process — from script development to visual effects and marketing strategies. AI won’t replace creativity, but will act as one of many powerful tools that can enable creators to focus on storytelling and innovation while streamlining time-intensive tasks like managing, distributing and monetizing content.

This synergy between human creativity and AI-driven efficiencies will unlock unprecedented opportunities for storytelling at scale.

Teresa Phillips — CEO of Spherex, which leverages its AI technology to generate age ratings for its content partners, ensuring video content complies with local regulations in a myriad of markets:

In 2025, generative AI will enable real-time, in-stream editing, automatically adjusting scenes and dialogue for regional compliance and audience sensitivities without disrupting the narrative flow.

This capability will transform how media companies approach localization, eliminating multiple content versions while ensuring cultural relevance and regulatory compliance. Viewers will rarely notice these dynamic adjustments, allowing content to flow seamlessly across cultural boundaries without additional investment.

Dom Perella — CEO of Character.AI, a chatbot service that offers users millions of AI-generated characters to interact with:

To date, a huge amount of attention and investment has been devoted to AI as a utility.

In 2025, I believe the focus will shift. We’ll see more personal applications in interactive entertainment, and advancements in AI-driven video and voice tech will help create a more engaging, entertaining and personal consumer experience.

The AI-media legal battle heats up

Peter Csathy — chairman of Creative Media, an entertainment and tech business advisory and legal services firm:

In 2025, federal courts hearing generative AI copyright infringement cases (e.g., NY Times v. OpenAI, Dow Jones v. Perplexity) will make their first “fair use” decisions, and those initial decisions will come down on the side of rightsholders (rejecting fair use).

That won’t mean the “fair use” issue will be conclusively resolved, of course, since the generative AI companies on the losing end will certainly appeal. But these critical initial legal victories by media will impact and accelerate the market for licensing their content for generative AI purposes, significantly (and properly) increasing the dollars and overall economics that flow to rightsholders.

The post 8 AI Predictions for 2025: From an AI-Made Hollywood Blockbuster to ‘Immersive’ TV Viewing appeared first on TheWrap.

On the ground, those reporters have weathered whipping Santa Ana winds, a lack of water and cell service and the shock of covering blazes that have damaged or destroyed more than 9,000 homes — about 5,300 of those structures decimated by the Palisades fire. By late Thursday, the fires had torched 29,000 acres combined — about twice the area of Manhattan — and killed at least six people.

For Kris Van Cleave, CBS News’ senior transportation correspondent and a Los Angeles-area native, covering the Eaton fire near Altadena and Pasadena cut too close to home. He witnessed a 91-year-old man’s home burn to the ground.

“Covering this fire is coming home — not in the way I want to,” Van Cleave told TheWrap. “These stories are always hard because everyone I meet today will be having one of the worst days of their lives, and that’s the challenge as a reporter.”

Ginger Zee, ABC News’ chief meteorologist and chief climate correspondent, witnessed Altadena first responders lose their own homes as they toiled to save others’ in the east side neighborhood. LAFD Capt. Dan Lievense pointed out to her some “homes across the street of one of his buddies who’s a firefighter, and that house is gone,” she said.

And Liz Kreutz, NBC News National Correspondent, recalled encountering a Palisades man who rented a bicycle near Downtown L.A. and desperately rode back to try to save his two dogs. “He wasn’t allowed to get past the fire line, and he was crying and so worried, and a first responder saw him and talked to him, and that first responder went and got his address, drove to the house, checked on the house, checked on the dogs, and brought them back to him,” Kreutz said.

The reporters absorb all this while standing in the path of a real-time catastrophe, with live embers blown in their faces, smoke choking their breathing and the potentially deadly winds whipping the fire unexpectedly in their direction. Local TV reporters also stood outside in dangerous conditions, often lending a hand like one who insisted on giving a ride to a frantic homeowner fleeing on foot.

TheWrap spoke with five television reporters who are covering Los Angeles’ historic fires to get their on-the-ground view of the ongoing crisis. Here are their stories.

Kris Van Cleave, CBS News’ senior transportation correspondent

On “coming home” to cover a devastating wildfire:
I grew up in Pasadena, so coming to cover this fire, in a way, is coming home. It’s coming home to see places that I have known since I was a teenager or in grade school, that are now forever changed.

We had lunch today at one of my favorite spots in Pasadena — Rotisserie Chicken of California, a family-owned business.

I’ve been going there with my one of my best friends since high school. I was greeted by the owner, who told me she and her husband, who makes all the chicken, lost their house in the fire. And they came to work because it was better than sitting there thinking about all the things they’d lost.

On watching a 91-year-old man’s house burn to the ground:
What will stick with me for a long time is yesterday, we were doing the morning show. The house behind us, the firefighters tried to save it, they couldn’t — [it was] fully engulfed in flames when we went on the air. We watched it burn to the ground.

A couple hours later, we met the owner, a 91-year-old man who’d lived in that house for 60 years. And he probably would have died in that house because he was dead set on staying there to defend it with a garden house – had his girlfriend not turned the water off and made him leave.

On the need to “take a breath” before reporting:
I had a moment on the drive in today where I was just thinking about my colleagues and friends who are covering this — our local guys, our local reporters from CBS News Los Angeles and all the stations, who have been on the air around the clock in frightening conditions, in some cases telling people block by block you need to go now. And then just looking at all the things that aren’t here anymore in my hometown — that was hard to take a breath before we started this morning and just sort of put that away for a bit.

These stories are always hard because everyone I meet today will be having one of the worst days of their lives, and that’s the challenge as a reporter.

It’s far different when it’s your community, it’s where you’re from. A woman we met today, who will be in our CBS Evening News piece tonight, she lost her home. Her daughter and I went to the same high school in La Canada — Flintridge Prep.

On the reaction from local residents:
Every person I’ve talked to that has lost their home has started by saying almost the same, which is simply, “I’m in shock. I haven’t processed this yet.”

They’re emotional, they’re sad. One woman told us, “I don’t know if I should be angry or sad or both.” You know, I think it’ll probably be all of those things.

And there are some questions that deserve to be answered about could things have been done better? Could people have been warned sooner?

Those are questions that we’re going to get answers to. They’re not going to bring back homes that were lost, but maybe they save homes the next time.

Robert Ray, Fox Weather correspondent

On the “apocalyptic” fires:
[It’s] the worst wildfire scenario that I’ve ever been on the ground for, for sure. The word “apocalyptic” is tossed around a lot, but it’s pretty darn true to the areas that have been affected by these fires and winds. There’s no doubt. Pacific Palisades, where we’ve been reporting all morning today, and Malibu for that matter, are just out of this world. You can’t believe your eyes, you can’t believe your ears, and you can’t believe your smells, as well. It’s a remarkably devastating scenario, catastrophic. And these are communities that have been around for a long time, that are part of American culture, and they are just wiped off the face of the earth.

On the reaction from L.A. residents:
They are at a loss for words at this point. It’s all emotion, and they’re in shock and really kind of unable to comprehend what has happened over the course of the past three to four days.

These folks, they know how to prepare for fires. Everyone who lives in this part of the country understands it. But how can you prepare for a situation where you get 80 to 100 mile-an-hour wind gusts coming through hills, mountains and valleys, and try to protect your family? You can’t.

What most of the people I’ve been talking to are saying is, “Well, how do we fight this? How do you fight a situation like that?” And so they’re completely torn apart, devastated. Especially in those towns like Malibu and Pacific Palisades — those are tight-knit communities, gorgeous, and people live there for very specific reasons. A lot of [these buildings have] been around for generations, and to lose family homes and businesses — I don’t think people quite know where to start at this point, because the shock has not worn off yet.

Ginger Zee, ABC News’ chief meteorologist and chief climate correspondent

On the “sorrow” of seeing a firefighter try to save his own neighborhood:
Meeting Capt. Dan Lievense today from the LAFD, he’s been in fire for a long time. He was fighting the first fire when he got off of that shift and realized he needed to get to his home [in Altadena] — his childhood home and his current home — which are right next door to each other and were being threatened by the Eaton fire. And he even said he’s seen a lot of these disasters, and he was shocked by how far the winds had brought the embers.

I got a chance to talk to him and walk around with him as he relived how he grabbed a fire hose from a nearby fire department — they loaned him one — and was able to just use the pressure out of the fire hydrant by the corner of his home when the entire other side of the street was engulfed already — a wall of flames.

He was able to save his childhood home, which is where his mother lives, his home and then two neighbors. But his sorrow of wanting to do more — because he said, “Listen, I got into this to help people” — it will stick with me. The part where a first responder finds themselves on the other side of fire — that will never leave my brain.

On first responders losing their homes:
This neighborhood [Altadena] has a large concentration of first responders. Every single person we met was either a retired member of the police department or a firefighter. Capt. Lievense was pointing out a home across the street of one of his buddies who’s a firefighter, and that house is gone. So we know that a lot of first responders were doing their job and they lost their homes in the neighborhood that we were standing in for hours this morning.

On the “piecemeal” sleep schedule for her and the firefighters:
We came off [reporting] a snowstorm in Washington, D.C., landed, went and did “World News Tonight,” and then turned around and I got sleep that night. Now I’m forgetting which night that was — but after that, I’ve had a piecemeal, maybe two hours [of sleep].

Thankfully, in news, we’re pretty trained, we’re pretty resilient. And I’m not fighting, right? We have the opportunity to just [get] water, go in and hydrate, and do all those things.

But I would be most focused on those first responders, because they’re the ones doing [the work]. We saw them doing round after round of getting the spot fires out. Because the fires, they still burn, they smolder. And these guys are just having to go back over the same thing. There’s a a magnet school down the road from us, and — I did four hours between promos and “GMA” and all that stuff — and we watched the same spot get treated three times, engine after engine to come through. That’s the type of persistent, hard work these guys are doing, and that’s who I would be focused on — their energy and their lack of sleep.

Liz Kreutz, NBC News national correspondent

On texting her husband about the wreckage:
My husband, Justin Sullivan, is also a news photographer. He works at Getty Images. So we’re both texting each other while I was at the Palisades fire and he’s at the Altadena fire. We’re texting each other, both equally, saying, “Oh my God, this is crazy. Oh my God, this is insane. Oh my goodness, everything’s gone.” And we’re both texting back and forth about it as we’re working nonstop through the night, covering these different fires.

On the “unprecedented” wildfire:
I grew up in Southern California. I’m used to fire, I’ve covered wildfires — I’ve never seen anything like what we’re experiencing right now. The fact that it’s not just one massive destructive fire, but multiple massive destructive fires that ignited during hurricane-force winds, creating these firestorms, it’s just truly been unprecedented and really hard to wrap your head around.

While it was unfolding, you could tell that this was going to be different when the wind started coming.

On seeing a fire spark on the beach:
There was a moment when we were covering the fire the first day, and we were in the gridlock, just like everybody else, trying to get through. And we made it to Pacific Coast Highway, and we’re at the staging area.

Finally, after hours of trying to get through, it seemed like it was maybe going to calm — like the wind kind of died down for a moment. And all of a sudden, my producer points at an ember that sparked a palm tree right on the beach where we were on the coast. And within five minutes, every palm tree right next to it, all five palm trees, were up in flames.

That was the moment we’re like, “OK, this fire crossed the PCH, it’s made it to the coast, this is not good.” And then just hours later, is when the winds pushed it north to Malibu. And within hours, all of Malibu was engulfed in flames. All those homes on the coast, almost every single one destroyed.

On a firefighter saving a man’s two dogs:
There was a moment on Tuesday where a man comes riding up on a bike and he is just hysterical in tears, so stressed, so scared. And I walked up to say, “Are you OK?” And he said that he lived in the Palisades, and he had gone into work that day in Downtown L.A., and then he got wind of these evacuation orders, and he tried to drive back — gridlock, he couldn’t get back.

So he said he rented a bike to ride back to save his two dogs that were in the home, and he could only make it to where we were at the staging round. He wasn’t allowed to get past the fire line, and he was crying and so worried, and a first responder saw him and talked to him, and that first responder went and got his address, drove to the house, checked on the house, checked on the dogs and brought them back to him.

That was just a really cool moment to see, that personal touch that they have and that we take such care of people during these times. But it also shows the fear that so many people had. And the firefighters, they’re heroes.

Brian Entin, NewsNation’s senior national correspondent

On the “block after block after block” carnage:
It’s just awful. We’ve been in Pasadena and Altadena today [Thursday] and the Palisades yesterday — I know everybody says “apocalyptic” and it looks like a movie, but it actually really does. Just entire parts of the city, like here in Altadena, it’s not just one or two blocks, it’s block after block after block of
homes to the ground.

Right now, I’m doing a 360 [turn] and looking around, all you see is the chimneys that are left. The houses have burned totally to the ground. And we met several people who have come out to check on their houses today, and they’re in total shock when they get here and see that there’s nothing left. It’s very, very sad.

On the extraordinary “level of destruction”:
I’ve covered dozens of hurricanes in my career, but I’ve never covered a wildfire like this. I didn’t realize that they can cause this level of destruction so quickly.

The fact that, again, that entire neighborhoods are gone is really jarring. And the emotion side — meeting people who have lost everything, but they don’t know where they’re going to go, people who have lived in these homes in Altadena for 30, 40, 50 years, and now arrive back and everything is gone.

On having no service:
There’s still no cell service. So the only way for us to communicate with our bosses and to do our live shots with our network is with the Starlink.

Just getting the information out, getting the video out, getting the stories out, is really, really challenging, with zero cell service. If we didn’t have the Starlink, there would be no way for us to transmit the stories or to get the information out.

On having no water:
We saw it yesterday in the Palisades. There’s still no water in a lot of the fire trucks … There’s still hot spots, and the fire department just showed up and they can’t get any water out of the hydrant. They started asking people where swimming pools are — they’re still using swimming pools to try and tame the hot spots, which is just shocking.

The post On the Ground for ‘Apocalyptic’ LA Wildfires: 5 TV Reporters Talk Covering Unprecedented Level of Destruction appeared first on TheWrap.

The South Korean series was seen in 2.2 million U.S. households in the first four days it was available, according to Samba TV data, a massive debut no matter the time of year.

However, this week’s edition of the Wrap Report looks at the full week following that big debut. While “Squid Game” was 2024’s final big streaming hit, it wasn’t the most-watched streaming program from Dec. 30 to Jan. 5. That honor belongs to “Landman,” the latest Paramount+ drama from mastermind Taylor Sheridan. 

“Squid Game” still had a strong showing this week. Season 2 came in at No, 2, while Season 1 drew enough viewers to come in at No. 9. Not bad for a season more than three years old.

Netflix placed five more titles on the Top 10 this week, starting with “Missing You.” The thriller, which arrived on Jan. 1, follows a detective looking for answers after her fiancée reappears on a dating app more than a decade after his disappearance. 

“Carry On,” the Christmas-travel themed feature-length thriller, lands No. 4 this week. It’s followed by Season 6 of “Virgin River.” Netflix added the latest installment of its long-running drama to its library on Dec. 19, and audiences clearly used post-holiday downtime to get caught up. “The Six Triple Eight” comes in at No. 6 this week. The film, written and directed by Tyler Perry, tells the story of an all Black, all female army battalion that solved the logistical crisis of soldiers’ mail during World War II.

No. 7 is “Dune: Part Two,” which returns to the streaming Top 10 for the first time since early June. Back then, “Dune” was riding high on Max. This week’s return is due to the blockbuster making its way to the Netflix library. 

It’s followed by another blockbuster, as “Wicked” flies onto the chart thanks to a VOD release. The box office smash is actually still in theaters across the country, but many viewers took advantage of the holiday break to buy and stream the film from the comfort of their couches. In fact, the film beat out all of the other 2024 blockbuster debuts on VOD with 915k US households watching. That was almost 70% higher viewership than the six-day VOD viewership of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and more than 50% higher viewership than Deadpool & Wolverine. 

Rounding out our list of most-watched streaming programs is “Beast Games” on Amazon Prime Video. The reality TV series led by YouTube star, Mr. Beast, has a reported budget of $100 million, and audiences tuned in over the holidays to catch the spectacle of 1,000 contestants competing for $5 million.

The linear chart this week was a showdown between CBS and ABC, with CNN making its way, thanks to live events, which account for the first half of our Top 10. Three of those programs were New Year’s Eve specials, including ABC’s “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest,” which took the top spot. 

CBS’s entry in December 31 programming, “New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash,” comes in at No. 3, while Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen’s annual countdown comes in at No. 5 for CNN.

Sandwiched in between the New Year’s Eve coverage is “The 82nd Annual Golden Globes” telecast on CBS, which came in at No. 2, and the “2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony,” which aired on ABC on New Year’s Day and landed No. 4.

Spots No. 6 through No. 9 belong to “The Price is Right” on CBS this week, while “Wheel of Fortune” on ABC comes in at No. 10.

The Wrap Report provides an exclusive first look at the most watched movies and TV series from the past week across both streaming and linear television sourced from viewership trends collected from Samba TV’s panel of more than 3 million households, balanced to the U.S. Census.

The post ‘Landman’ Denies ‘Squid Game’ the Top Spot on 2025’s First Streaming Chart appeared first on TheWrap.

It’s looking like Amazon’s bet on Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Chris Evans paid off. Prime Video’s “Red One” secured 2.1 billion minutes in the second week of December, topping Nielsen’s list of the Top 10 overall most streamed shows and movies. “Red One” is now the most-watched Prime Video movie to place on Nielsen’s Top 10.

Adults aged 35-to-64 accounted for 54% of viewing for the title during the week that ran from Dec. 9 to Dec. 15. The Christmas action flick also stands as the second Prime Video title to surpass 2 billion minutes behind “Fallout.” The apocalyptic dramedy starring Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins saw 2.9 billion and 2.6 billion minutes in consecutive weeks last April.

The Christmas movie was followed by two Netflix titles: “Carry-On” and “Black Doves.” The Taron Egerton action thriller secured 1.69 billion minutes streamed during its opening weekend (the movie premiered on Dec. 13). Roughly half of its viewing (47%) came from adults aged 18-to-49 years old, which is largely considered to be TV’s most coveted demographic. Additionally, 28% of its audience were Hispanic viewers. 

As for “Black Doves,” the spy thriller starring Keira Knightley, Ben Whishaw and Sarah Lancashire saw 1 billion minutes during its second week of being available to stream and topped the Originals list. The series became more popular with younger viewers during its second week as its viewership from adults aged 18-to-49 years old jumped from 30% to 35%.

Netflix distributed three more of the most watched titles, the first being the controversial Blake Lively movie “It Ends With Us.” Director Justin Baldoni’s adaptation of the Colleen Hoover novel of the same name secured fourth place on Nielsen’s list with 977 million minutes streamed. “No Good Deed,” Liz Feldman’s dark comedy starring Linda Cardellini, also placed on the list, landing in sixth place with 883 million minutes streamed. Finally, “Grey’s Anatomy” once again made the list, securing 803 million minutes streamed as well as the No. 8 spot on the list. The Shonda Rhimes medical drama is available to stream on both Netflix and Hulu.

“Landman” also returned to list during its sixth week, seeing 826 million minutes streamed and settling in seventh place. That’s a drop from the series’ third place ranking the previous week. However, a Paramount+ title placing on the list is notable overall as Nielsen’s Top 10 Overall is often dominated by Netflix and Hulu titles.

Other regular additions were “Bluey” and Fox’s animation kings “Bob’s Burgers” and “Family Guy.” The critically-acclaimed children’s series came in fifth place with 905 million minutes streamed during the week in question, putting Disney+ on the list. As for “Bob’s Burgers” and “Family Guy,” they came in ninth (743 million minutes) and 10th place (730 million minutes), respectively. Both are available to stream on Hulu.

The post ‘Red One’ Debuts Atop Nielsen’s Streaming Chart With 2.1 Billion Minutes Streamed appeared first on TheWrap.