Another crazy year for Hollywood stocks is in the books as streaming reached a major inflection point after turning the corner on profitability in 2025.
However, the industry continues to struggle with a declining linear TV business and mixed success at the box office, which has weighed on media companies’ quarterly financial results and their share prices. The disruption created by looming consolidation across the industry is sure to add even more pressure heading into 2026 and beyond.
Here’s TheWrap’s recap of how the major streamers’ stocks performed during the year and the highs and lows the media companies faced.
Netflix
Netflix’s stock closed up at $93.76 apiece on Wednesday. Though the streamer’s shares are up 73% in the past five years, 5% in the past year and 5.7% year to date, they have fallen 29% in the past six months and 14% in the past month.
After surpassing $1,000 per share earlier this year, Netflix implemented a 10-for-1 stock split to make its shares more affordable for investors and employees. Adjusted for the split, the company’s 52-week high sits at $134.12 and its 52-week low is $82.11.
Despite no longer disclosing subscribers on a quarterly basis, the streamer continued to tout membership growth as it grew its ad-supported tier and increased prices in some markets. But uncertainty surrounding an $83 billion deal for Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming assets earlier this month has weighed down its stock price.
Looking ahead, Netflix plans to dive into video podcasts through a partnership with Spotify and iHeartMedia starting in early 2026. It also opened its first two Netflix House locations in Philadelphia and Dallas, with plans to expand to a third location on the Las Vegas Strip in 2027. Longer-term, Netflix is aspiring to reach a $1 trillion market cap by 2030.
Disney
Disney finished 2025 with its stock trading at $113.77 per share, rebounding from a 52-week low of $80.10 per share in April but still below its 52-week high of $124.69. It is up 6.5% in the past month, 2.6% year to date, and 2.1% in the past year, but is down 8.3% in the past six months and 37% in the past five years.
The company made progress in growing streaming profitability, launched a new ESPN streaming service and crossed the $6 billion mark at the global box office for the first time since the COVID shutdown. But 2025 wasn’t without its challenges as the company was hit with protests and calls for a boycott of its streaming services after Jimmy Kimmel was pulled from ABC’s airwaves over his comments about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Adding to the backlash was an ill-timed price hike on its streaming services. Kimmel’s show has since been restored, and the late night host extended his contract through May 2027.
Looking ahead, all eyes will be on Disney’s choice for CEO Bob Iger’s successor, who is set to be announced in early 2026. The company will also follow Netflix in ending its quarterly subscriber disclosures for Disney+ and Hulu in its first quarter of 2026 and merge the two platforms into a unified standalone app.
Additionally, it will expand its theme park footprint in the coming years with a new location set to open in Abu Dhabi and new lands and attractions coming to its parks around the globe. Disney also has taken a $1 billion stake in OpenAI and will license its IP to Sora, partnering on content for Disney+ and giving its employees access to ChatGPT. It will also launch a new cruise ship, the Disney Adventure, in early 2026, following the launch of the Disney Destiny in late 2025.
Warner Bros. Discovery
Warner Bros. Discovery rebounded from a 52-week low of $7.52 to $28.82 per share, slightly below its 52-week high of $30 per share hit earlier this month. It is up 20.8% in the past month, 151% in the past six months, 170% year to date and 172.7% in the past year.
While much of the stock’s momentum has been driven by the bidding war between Netflix and Paramount, its streaming business continues to grow its profitability and subscribers as HBO Max expands internationally. It also saw a hot streak at the box office, becoming the first studio to cross $4 billion in 2025 and to release seven consecutive films with $40 million-plus opening weekends.
Netflix’s deal not only faces the prospect of a lengthy regulatory review, but also a $108.4 billion hostile takeover bid from Paramount for all of Warner Bros. Discovery. The board of directors at WBD have advised against the Paramount bid, but are currently reviewing an amended offer that includes a personal guarantee from Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, which they are expected to reject.
If the Netflix deal goes through, it will separate its linear networks business into Discovery Global in the third quarter of 2026.
While the fight between Netflix and Paramount plays out, WBD is on track to generate a streaming profit of at least $1.3 billion and studios profit of at least $3 billion in 2025. It also is on track to reach 150 million streaming subscribers by the end of 2026, with launches planned in Germany, Italy and the UK and Ireland.
Paramount
Paramount, which finally closed its $8 billion merger with David Ellison’s Skydance Media in August, finished 2025 at $13.40 per share. It is down 14.7% in the past month, but is up 14.1% in the past six months, year to date and past year and 27.5% in the past five years.
The first half of the year was rough for Paramount as the company suffered multiple rounds of layoffs and was in limbo as it awaited FCC approval of the merger. Donald Trump also locked horns with CBS, leading to a $16 million settlement with “60 Minutes.” Additionally, the network revealed that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert would end in May 2026, a major blow to the declining late night format.
Despite the continued decline of its cable networks, Paramount saw growth in its streaming business with more than 79 million subscribers. It will finish 2025 with approximately $555 million in domestic grosses, 37% down from the previous year. The studio currently has just eight films slated for release in 2026, though it is expected to add several more films to that count in the near future.
Since taking over control of the studio from the Redstone family, Ellison has hit the ground running, striking major deals with creative talent, greenlighting new series and securing rights to WWE and Zuffa Boxing. But he’s also had major missteps, including losing Taylor Sheridan to NBCUniversal and failing to win an auction for Warner Bros. Discovery.
Ellison is trying to fix the latter with an $108.4 billion hostile takeover bid for WBD. The $30 per share, all-cash tender offer is open until Jan. 21, although Paramount could extend the deadline. As of Dec. 19, less than 400,000 shares have been tendered to Paramount.
Looking ahead, Paramount plans to spend more than $1.5 billion on content in 2026. It will also raise prices in the U.S., move Paramount+, Pluto TV and BET+ to a unified backend infrastructure, ramp up its theatrical slate to at least 15 movies per year over the next few years and target cost savings of at least $3 billion.
Comcast
Shares of Comcast ended 2025 at $29.89 per share, above its 52-week low of $25.75 per share but off its 52-week high of $38.40. Though the company’s stock is up 12.5% in the past month, it has fallen 20% in the past year and year to date, 16% in the past six months and 43% in the past five years as the company has faced pressure in its broadband, pay TV and streaming businesses.
Peacock’s paid subscriber base remains stuck at 41 million, behind all of its major competitors, and it is still an unprofitable service despite narrowing its quarterly losses. Comcast also lost out in the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery after submitting three bids for the company’s studio & streaming assets.
But it wasn’t all bad as the NBA returned to NBCUniversal as part of an 11-year rights deal. Universal Pictures also had a strong year, once again clearing the $1 billion mark at the domestic box office. While none of its films topped $1 billion worldwide, the studio had success with “Jurassic World: Rebirth” and ‘Wicked: For Good” as well as the “How to Train Your Dragon” remake and Blumhouse’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.”
Looking ahead, the media conglomerate will spin off its cable network portfolio into Versant, which will be completed in January. NBCUniversal also scored a big win with a massive $1 billion TV and film deal with Taylor Sheridan. He will start working with the company in March on the film side, though his TV contract with Paramount runs through 2028. NBCU will also celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2026, with major events such as the Milan Cortina Olympics, Super Bowl LX and the FIFA World Cup.
Lionsgate
After splitting from Starz in May, shares of Lionsgate Studios Corp. have seen major momentum, with the company hitting a fresh 52-week high of $9.46 on Monday. Shares are up 24% in the past month, 57% in the past six months and 34.6% year to date, but closed down 1.19% on Wednesday at $9.14 apiece.
At the box office, Lionsgate had left little mark on theaters’ bottom line going back to the start of 2024. But that has begun to change with a trio of late-year releases in “The Long Walk,” “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” and “The Housemaid,” the latter of which is in theaters with $46.4 million grossed in the U.S. and Canada over two weekends.
Lionsgate will finish 2025 with an approximate overall domestic total of $330 million, higher than the studio’s anemic $251 million in 2024 but below totals of $586 million in 2023 and $776 million in 2019. Films like “Michael” and a new “Hunger Games” prequel should make it a bigger player in 2026.
Lionsgate may also be an M&A target in 2026 as the company has been circled by activist investor Anson Funds, which has previously asked the movie studio to consider an outright sale or asset sales, as well as major investors including billionaire Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management and former Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin’s Liberty Strategic Capital.
Legendary Entertainment has mulled a potential acquisition of the company. In an interview with CNBC, Lionsgate vice chairman Michael Burns declined to comment on the status of the talks, but said the studio would be a “valuable asset” to “a lot of different companies” given its scale and library of premium content. He added that there are three or four companies that he believed would be a “great strategic alliance” with Lionsgate and generate cost savings, though he declined to elaborate.
Jeremy Fuster contributed to this report
