South Asian Blockbusters and Local Originals Surge Alongside Hollywood Franchises as Global Audience Engagement Takes Center Stage
Los Angeles - December 10, 2025 - Parrot Analytics today announced the finalists for the 8th Annual Global Demand Awards, which recognize the world’s most in-demand and value-driving TV series and movies for the year 2025. Winners in all categories will be announced in January 2026.
As the streaming industry moves decisively from a growth-at-all-costs era into a profitability-focused one, every greenlight, renewal, acquisition, and library decision is now treated as a high-stakes capital allocation choice. Major platforms are tightening content spend, rebalancing their slates, and leaning into new multi-service bundles to raise ARPU and reduce churn, even as audiences expect a constant flow of compelling stories.
In this environment, the 8th Global Demand Awards cut through the noise by spotlighting the titles that actually win the battle for global audience attention - the series and films that generate the most sustained engagement and fandom across platforms, formats, and release windows worldwide.
At the same time, the competition is no longer just about “more hours watched”; it is about the quality and intent of attention. The Global Demand Awards are built for this reality: they benchmark content on a single, unified measure of audience demand that normalizes across platforms, windows, and business models. This perspective is reinforced by McKinsey & Company’s 2025 report, "The attention equation: Winning the right battles for consumer attention", which argues that the quality and intent of attention - not just time spent - drive monetization and explicitly incorporates Parrot Analytics’ audience demand data as a key input to its model.
Viewing has also never been more borderless. This year marks a historic surge in South Asian content, with pan-India blockbusters such as Pushpa: The Rule – Part 2, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3, Singham Again, and Sikandar not only dominating domestic box offices but also converting that momentum into sustained global demand. Alongside these sit Korean and Japanese series like Squid Game, My Hero Academia and Dandadan, local European and Latin American originals including Adolescence and The Eternaut, and global animated franchises such as Moana 2 and Mufasa: The Lion King. Together, they show how culturally specific stories and franchise IP now coexist as complementary engines of global soft power and platform value.
Looking across this year’s finalists, two distinct patterns emerge: hyper-scale spectacles and hyper-specific originals. On one side are tentpole projects like Gladiator II and Pushpa: The Rule - Part 2, designed to command global attention through massive budgets. On the other are highly authored stories such as the British single-take drama Adolescence or Argentina’s The Eternaut, which generate passionate fandoms that travel worldwide. Together, they demonstrate that while there are many paths to capturing audience attention, the most reliable way to validate that success is through audience demand - the industry’s category-defining global measurement standard from Parrot Analytics.
“We have officially entered the era of the attention equation, where the volume of content matters less than the intensity of engagement it generates,” said Samuel Stadler, VP Marketing at Parrot Analytics. “This year's finalists prove that audience demand is borderless and platform-agnostic. Whether it’s a regional Indian blockbuster outperforming a Hollywood franchise or a niche anime finding a mainstream global audience, the old rules of distribution no longer apply. These awards celebrate the titles that have successfully crossed global borders to capture the world's most valuable currency: human attention.”
Winners for all categories will be determined using Parrot Analytics’ global entertainment analytics system, ensuring a true reflection of audience desire for excellent storytelling and performance, with no “for your consideration” campaigns or voting committees influencing the results. Instead, winners are selected using Parrot Analytics’ empirical measurement standard - as used by Guinness World Records to certify its records - which captures how much each TV series or movie resonates with people in markets around the world, across all platforms.
The top five finalists for each category of the 8th Annual Global Demand Awards are as follows, in alphabetical order and subject to change prior to the final announcement of all winners in January 2026.
Methodology: Refer to end of announcement.
TV Categories
World’s Choice - Most In-Demand TV Show in the World 2025
My Hero Academia
Squid Game
Stranger Things
The Last of Us
WWE Monday Night Raw
Most In-Demand Series Debut of 2025
Adolescence
Alien: Earth
Daredevil: Born Again
IT: Welcome To Derry
When Life Gives You Tangerines
Most In-Demand Anime Series of 2025
Dandadan
My Hero Academia
One Piece
Solo Leveling
The Apothecary Diaries
Most In-Demand Children’s Series of 2025
Masha and the Bear
Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir
Peppa Pig
Sesame Street
SpongeBob SquarePants
Most In-Demand Comedy Series of 2025
Hazbin Hotel
Rick and Morty
Saturday Night Live
South Park
The Simpsons
Most In-Demand Documentary Series of 2025
Ancient Aliens
Clarkson's Farm
Formula 1: Drive to Survive
The Curse of Oak Island
Welcome to Wrexham
Most In-Demand Drama Series of 2025
Black Mirror
Reacher
Squid Game
Stranger Things
The Last of Us
Most In-Demand Horror Series of 2025
Kaiju No. 8
Stranger Things
The Last of Us
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon
Yellowjackets
Most In-Demand Reality Series of 2025
America's Got Talent
Big Brother (US)
Impractical Jokers
Love Island USA
The Voice (US)
Most In-Demand Superhero Series of 2025
Creature Commandos
Daredevil: Born Again
Gen V
Invincible
Peacemaker
Most In-Demand Asian Original Series of 2025
Paatal Lok
Panchayat
Squid Game
The Great Indian Kapil Show
When Life Gives You Tangerines
Most In-Demand European Original Series of 2025
Adolescence
Black Mirror
Doctor Who (2005)
Love Island (UK)
Slow Horses
Most In-Demand Latin American Original Series of 2025
Bandidos
Criminal Code (DNA Do Crime)
Fake Profile (Perfil Falso)
La Rosa De Guadalupe
The Eternaut (El Eternauta)
Movie Categories
World’s Choice - Most In-Demand Movie in the World 2025
Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3
Moana 2
Mufasa: The Lion King
Pushpa: The Rule - Part 2
Singham Again
Most In-Demand Movie Premiere of 2025 (45-day window)
Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3
Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1
Mufasa: The Lion King
Pushpa: The Rule - Part 2
Sikandar
Most In-Demand Action Movie of 2025
Captain America: Brave New World
Gladiator II
Pushpa: The Rule - Part 2
Sikandar
Singham Again
Most In-Demand Animated Movie of 2025
Demon Slayer - Kimetsu No Yaiba - The Movie: Infinity Castle
K-Pop: Demon Hunters
Moana 2
Mufasa: The Lion King
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
Most In-Demand Comedy Movie of 2025
A Real Pain
Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3
Mickey 17
Red One
The Electric State
Most In-Demand Documentary Movie of 2025
Becoming Led Zeppelin
No Other Land
Ocean with David Attenborough
Wick Is Pain
Yo Yo Honey Singh: Famous
Most In-Demand Drama Movie of 2025
Game Changer
Gladiator II
Pushpa: The Rule - Part 2
Sikandar
Singham Again
Most In-Demand Horror Movie of 2025
Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3
Final Destination: Bloodlines
Heretic
Nosferatu
Sinners
Most In-Demand Asian Export of 2025
Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3
Game Changer
Pushpa: The Rule - Part 2
Sikandar
Singham Again
Most In-Demand European Export of 2025
28 Years Later
A Working Man (Levon Cade)
Gladiator II
The Brutalist
The Gorge
Most In-Demand Latin American Export of 2025
Batman Azteca: Choque De Imperios
Counterstrike (Contraataque)
Diablo
Our Times (Nuestros Tiempos)
The Lost Children
Most In-Demand Classic Film of 2025
Gladiator
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The Shawshank Redemption
Titanic
These finalists reflect the eclectic tastes of modern worldwide audiences, where granular regional hits and global franchise IP now work in tandem. By using empirical demand data to understand these shifts, executives can make smarter decisions about what to greenlight and market - boosting the long-term value of both content and platforms, and helping the industry navigate a profitability-driven, attention-based future with confidence.
Methodology
Please consider the following notes on our methodology:
TV Series
The finalists for each TV category are determined based on global audience demand data for the period January 1, 2025 – November 27, 2025.
TV series are only included if the show was released in the 2025 calendar year, or if any new episodes were released in the 2025 calendar year.
Children's content and anime have been excluded from the following categories: Most In-Demand Asian Original Series, Most In-Demand European Original Series and Most In-Demand Latin American Original Series as they already have their own dedicated categories.
Movies
The analysis timeframe that has been applied is November 1, 2024 – October 31, 2025 to ensure that U.S. holiday season movie releases are captured. Movies are only included if the film was released in that period.
For the Most In-Demand Classic Film category we only include films that premiered in 2005 or before.
About The Global Demand Awards
The Global Demand Awards is the world’s first unbiased, data-driven entertainment awards event. The winning TV series, movies and talent are determined using empirical audience demand around the world; there are no judges and no voting committees involved. Instead, winners are selected using Parrot Analytics’ global audience demand measurement system, which measures how much a TV series, movie or talent resonates with people in 200+ markets around the world, across all platforms. For more information, please visit www.globaldemandawards.com.
About Parrot Analytics
Parrot Analytics is the leader in global media & entertainment analytics – powering leading studios, streaming services, networks, production companies, talent agencies, entertainment law firms, game studios, sports leagues, film funds and government agencies to make smarter decisions in today’s attention economy. The company values content, talent, IP and sports by measuring over 2 billion audiences globally. By providing the industry’s leading AI-powered analytics solutions, Parrot Analytics solves the industry’s most existential questions: from measuring content revenue on streaming services and forecasting box office success, to valuing sports, IP and talent rights. For more information about Parrot Analytics, see: www.parrotanalytics.com.
