Luminate, a data research company owned by Variety’s parent company PMC, released its 2025 year-end film and TV report on Wednesday, and it contained some surprises. Peacock’s “Love Island USA” became the most-watched streaming original TV season, with annual viewership up 150%.
This makes “Love Island USA” the first unscripted series to top Luminate’s annual rankings. Netflix remains the leader in TV streaming, with six of the top 10 series in the overall ranking. However, as rivals HBO Max, Paramount+ and Amazon Prime Video have increased, Netflix’s share of hours spent watching original content in the U.S. has fallen below 60%. (Significant shows for Netflix’s rivals include HBO Max’s “The Pit,” Apple TV’s “Your Friends & Neighbors,” Hulu’s “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” and Paramount+’s “Landman.”)
Meanwhile, Luminate reports that 6 of the top 10 script releases with the highest retention rates were released weekly, eclipsing weekly releases from mass distribution. Overall, people continue to watch more television. Original series viewing hours increased by 18%, from 17 billion hours in 2024 to more than 20 billion hours in 2025.
However, as viewership increases, the amount of first-run television broadcasts decreases. As part of the industry-wide contraction, U.S.-produced premieres fell by 11% in 2025, with broadcasts seeing the steepest decline, down 21%. Cables decreased by 10%.
In terms of streaming, there was a total decline of 8% in 2025. Netflix leads with 133 SVOD TV premieres (up from 141 in 2024), followed by Prime Video with 59 (up from 42), Hulu with 45 (slightly down from 48), and Apple TV with 37 (stable).
In a struggling local production world, U.S.-produced TV premieres fell 11%, with Los Angeles in particular seeing a sharp 26% drop in film and TV projects (from 112 in 2024 to 83 in 2025). Meanwhile, in Canada, the number of projects increased from 67 projects in 2024 to 96 projects in 2025.
Luminate is also tracking a sharp decline in unscripted productions, with the genre seeing a 31% decline across streaming and linear. This included almost every subgenre except sports.
For international series, South Korea continues to be the most common source of streamers, followed by the UK and India.
Meanwhile, in movies, “Wicked” was the top U.S. streaming movie in 2025, followed by Netflix’s “KPop Demon Hunters.” Overall, streaming movie production continues to decline (from 343 in 2024 to 290 in 2025), and even Netflix has retreated.
At least the number of theatrical movie releases in the United States has increased, rising from 74 in 2024 to 80 in 2025.
The most-watched streaming original TV seasons in the U.S. in 2025, measured by minutes streamed.
And here are the top streaming movies of 2025, by viewing time in the US.
“Our 2025 Luminate Year-End Film & TV Report serves as a foundational piece of entertainment intelligence aimed at guiding industry partners in a landscape that is simultaneously maturing and fragmenting,” said Luminate CEO Rob Jonas. “Similar to the seismic shifts we have observed in the music industry to date, the past 12 months in film and television have been marked by a decisive pivot from the era of growth at all costs to a more intentional, data-driven approach to global fandom. As the streaming wars shift to a battle for retention and margins, the data contained in this report serves as a roadmap for the industry to find its footing in a new stable reality.”
Read the full Luminate report here.
