Nielsen Top 10 Streaming List Includes Just One 2024 Movie

It’s animation domination. Three of the top five highest-grossing movies of 2024 were animated — Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out 2 was No. 1 at $1.69 billion, followed by Disney’s Moana 2 at No. 3 with $1.02 billion and Universal/Illumination’s Despicable Me 4 at No. 4 with $969 million — and all but one of the most-streamed movies of 2024 were animated. Red One, Amazon MGM’s Christmas action-comedy starring Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans, is the lone live-action title on Nielsen’s 2024 top 10 streaming movies list, and it’s the only movie released last year to enter the ranking.

According to Nielsen, 2016’s Moana (Disney+) sailed to the top of the chart with 13.03 billion minutes viewed between Jan. 1, 2024, and Dec. 29, 2024. At No. 2 is 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie (Netflix), which recorded 11.72 billion minutes before leaving the platform in October. Red One (Prime Video) delivered 8.28 billion minutes to rank at No. 3 in just 17 days. (After its first four days on Prime Video, Amazon announced that Red One unwrapped Amazon MGM’s most-watched movie debut ever with 50 million viewers.)

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At No. 4 is 2023’s Trolls Band Together (Peacock/Netflix/Prime Video) with 7.44 billion minutes between the three platforms, with the No. 5 slot going to 2015’s Minions (Netflix) with 6.77 billion minutes viewed. That’s just above 2021’s Colombia-set musical Encanto (Disney+), placing at No. 6 with 6.61 billion minutes, and 2013’s Frozen (Disney+) at No. 7 with 6.28 billion minutes. 2021’s PAW Patrol: The Movie (Paramount+) is No. 8 with 6.05 billion minutes, followed by 2015’s Inside Out (Disney+) at No. 9 with 5.78 billion minutes recorded and 2017’s The Boss Baby (Netflix) delivering 5.59 billion minutes to take No. 10.

Red One topped the box office when it opened in North American theaters on Nov. 15, grossing $32.1 million in its first weekend. It fell to No. 3 the following weekend with the release of “Glicked” — Wicked and Gladiator II — and finished an eight-week theatrical run with $185 million worldwide (against a reported $250 million budget).

The original movie, scripted by The Fast & the Furious veteran writer Chris Morgan from an idea by Johnson’s producer Hiram Garcia, was panned by critics — it carries a 30 percent “rotten” on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes — but better received by audiences, who gave the movie a 90 percent on the Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter.

“Whether or not people like it, the value of these movies is different for our business model,” Kevin Wilson, Amazon MGM’s head of theatrical distribution, told Variety in November. “If we can put these movies out theatrically and cover our P&A [print and advertising] costs, why wouldn’t we? We’re getting a massive marketing campaign that’s being paid for before the film gets to streaming.”

An analyst estimated that Red One — which also stars Lucy Liu, Kiernan Shipka, and J.K. Simmons as Santa Claus — would lose over $100 million as a theatrical release regardless of how it performed on streaming. Red One was originally developed for Amazon’s Prime Video before being rerouted to theaters and made its way to the platform on Dec. 12, just in time for the holidays.