Tuesday, 19 December 2023, 6:25 pm Press Release: Parrot Analytics
So long Elf, hello Die Hard?
New data
from Parrot Analytics suggests American holiday movie tastes
are shifting slightly from embracing characters like Buddy
the Elf towards those modeled after John McClane.
To
be clear, the vast majority of supply and demand for holiday
movies is still for family friendly fare. However, cracks
are appearing in this subgenre’s hold on the holiday movie
space.
In 2021 three quarters of holiday movies could
be categorized as family friendly. This share was down to
68% in 2023. The audience demand share for this content
dropped from around 88% in 2022 to 80% in 2023.
That
drop can be largely accounted for in the rise of holiday
thrillers. Recent Christmas movies that have embraced more
action, violence, and gore such as Silent Night,
Violent Night, and It’s a Wonderful Knife
are increasing the demand for this segment of the holiday
movie industry. The demand share for holiday thrillers has
gone from from under 8% in 2022 to over 13% so far in
2023.
There also appears to be more competition for
the dominant holiday movie platform this year. In 2022,
Warner Bros. Discovery's Max led other platforms in the U.S.
by a wide margin in total demand for holiday movies
streaming on the platform. But this year, Max’s lead in
demand for holiday content has shrunk considerably, while
other platforms like Amazon’s Prime Video and Disney+ have
higher demand for holiday movies going into the festive
season compared to last year.
Top Platforms for
Holiday Movies
The
number of holiday movies on Max was smaller in November 2023
compared to 2022. A few holiday classics the platform had
last year, such as How the Grinch Stole Christmas,
are no longer available to stream on Max in the
US.
Hulu has seen the most growth in this regard.
Even though the platform still has some of the lowest demand
for holiday movies, the total demand for holiday movies on
the platform in November this year was greater than in
December 2022, traditionally the month when holiday demand
reaches its peak.
As of November, Hulu had overtaken
Paramount+ with more demand for its holiday movies. The
addition of Die Hard and The Muppet Christmas
Carol has helped beef up the platform’s holiday
catalog going into this December.
Most
In-Demand Christmas Movies
The
most in-demand Christmas movies with American audiences are
mostly classics that have been available for decades, with
the exception of Krampus (2015) - another data point
showing how newer holiday thriller/horror films are breaking
through.
Disney+ doesn’t have a huge Christmas
catalog, but it features two of the five most in-demand
Christmas movies so far this season — Home Alone
and The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Family
friendly movies like How the Grinch Stole Christmas,
Home Alone, and Elf are currently among the
ten most in-demand Christmas movies this season.
It
is understandably difficult for new movies to break into the
crowded canon of Christmas classics. Even Netflix’s
Oscar-nominted Klaus (2019) was just 4.27x more in
demand that the average movie with American audiences in
November 2023.
Average US Demand for Holiday
Movies
Every
year, a big spike in the demand for holiday movies continues
from early November through the year’s end. In 2022, the
average demand for holiday movies grew by over 50% from the
first week of December to the final week of the
year.
As of the second week in December, the demand
for holiday movies in 2023 is outpacing the demand in 2022
and 2021. If these patterns hold again this year, there is a
lot of growth yet to happen in demand for holiday
movies.
What remains to be seen is whether all
platforms will experience a similar boost in audience
attention on holiday content as Christmas gets closer or if
some have a Christmas surprise in store for the year’s
final weeks.
Growing Demand for Holiday
Thrillers
While
the family-friendly fare that likely comes to mind when
imagining holiday movies still accounts for the vast
majority of audience attention for holiday content, other
varieties of holiday movies have been catching on with
audiences in recent years.
In the past two years the
share of supply and demand for thriller holiday movies has
been in balance. But this year there has been a large jump
in demand for thriller holiday content.
This shows
that there is further opportunity for more of these movies
to meet audience
demand.
