How the Streamers’ Movie Catalogs Stack Up, According to Demand | Charts

Parrot Analytics
·4 min read
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It’s already established that streaming changed the film industry. Streaming releases were an important way of keeping the film industry alive during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic when movie theaters had to stay closed for an unspecified period and releases were postponed. Even though some of the people involved with filmmaking expressed their grievances at streaming releases, this strategy hasn’t gone away with the reopening of movie theaters.

Disney’s “Turning Red” is the most in-demand streaming-released movie so far in 2022, with more than 52 times the demand for the average movie. The movie was released on Disney+ and at limited theaters in the U.S. due to the rising number of cases of the Omicron variant in January 2022. In spite of this, that movie has been very successful in the U.S. market, being in the top five most in-demand of all movies in 2022 thus far.

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Faced with the impossibility of giving their titles a wide theatrical release during the pandemic, some studios chose to sell the distribution rights to Amazon, which digitally released the title via Prime Video. That was the case for the three Prime Video movies in the top 10 list. All three movies were produced by Paramount Pictures and had their distribution rights acquired by Amazon. The most in-demand of them is “Coming 2 America,” a sequel to the 1988 comedy “Coming to America,” starring Eddie Murphy.    

“The Adam Project” is the most in-demand Netflix-released movie of the year, with 13.39 times the demand of the average movie. The other two Netflix movies in that ranking are “The Irishman,” Scorcese’s 210-minute length crime drama, and “Enola Holmes,” a movie adaptation of a book about the teenage sister of Sherlock Holmes with a sequel released on Nov. 4 this year.

It’s also worth noting that Apple TV+’s “CODA” (2021), the first movie distributed by a streaming service to win the Best Picture award at the Oscars is the fourth most in-demand streaming-released movie of 2022, almost two years after its release.

10 top movies on streaming, Jan. 1-Dec. 4, 2022, U.S. (Parrot Analytics)
10 top movies on streaming, Jan. 1-Dec. 4, 2022, U.S. (Parrot Analytics)

When it comes to movie catalog, HBO Max is the top streaming platform in the U.S. The streamer has a demand share of 18.7% of the total movie demand available across subscription video on demand services (SVODs) in the U.S. (including all movies, regardless of release type) in the third quarter of 2022 — even with a smaller catalog in term of number of movies available than two of its main competitors, Netflix and Prime Video. HBO Max has benefited from being part of the Warner Bros. Discovery ecosystem, with many Warner Bros. movies being released on the streaming platform simultaneously with the theatrical release or after a 45-day window.

Another platform where the demand share outperforms its catalog size is Disney+. Despite having only 4.3% of the number of movies available on SVOD, Disney+’s catalog share of demand is 11.5% of the total movie demand. Disney+’s movie catalog contains a large share of highly popular exclusive franchise movies like “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” “Avengers: Endgame” and “Deadpool,” which raises the average demand for a movie in that catalog.

Netflix and Prime Video, on the other hand, have the two biggest movie catalogs among the SVOD platforms but rank second and fourth in terms of demand respectively. Though both platforms have invested in a large catalog of movies, it hasn’t translated into a large share of audience demand.

Streaming movie catalog demand and supply, Q3, 2022, U.S. (Parrot Analytics)
Streaming movie catalog demand and supply, Q3, 2022, U.S. (Parrot Analytics)

Prime Video and Netflix’s underperforming demand share may be explained by the fact that both HBO Max and Disney+ are the main destinations for their parent companies’ produced movies, including some of the biggest theatrical releases and franchise installments, such as the Marvel and DC Universes, alongside “Star Wars,” Harry Potter and Pixar. Prime Video and Netflix rely more on movies licensed by other producers, which struggle to reach the same level of attention of these major franchises.

Daniel Quinaud is a senior data analyst at Parrot Analytics, a WrapPRO partner. For more from Parrot Analytics, visit the Data and Analysis Hub.

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