New Christmas Movies 2025: Predicting Netflix's Holiday Slate Amid Warner Bros Discovery Acquisition Announcement

Netflix is rolling out a packed slate of new Christmas movies for 2025 — just as its blockbuster acquisition of Warner Bros begins reshaping expectations for future holiday streaming.

While the deal won't affect this year's offerings, the prospect of Netflix eventually owning classics like Elf, The Polar Express and A Christmas Story has already sparked huge anticipation for what December could look like in the years ahead.

Netflix's 2025 Christmas slate: What you can stream right now

Even before its planned acquisition of Warner Bros, Netflix has already gone hard on new Christmas movies in 2025. The streamer's festive row is packed with originals alongside older favourites on its dedicated holiday hub.

Among the new Christmas movies 2025 available on Netflix are:

• 'Jingle Bell Heist' – a crime-comedy about two down-on-their-luck workers plotting to rob a luxury department store on Christmas Eve.
• 'Champagne Problems' – a Paris-set holiday romance where a business executive falls for the heir to the champagne brand she's trying to acquire.
• 'My Secret Santa' – a single mum takes a job as a disguised Santa at a ski resort and inevitably falls for her boss.
• 'A Merry Little Ex-Mas' – a recently divorced couple attempt one last family Christmas, with new partners in the mix.
• 'Man vs. Baby' – Rowan Atkinson returns as Trevor Bingley for a slapstick festive special, this time battling an infant instead of a bee.

Those sit alongside established Christmas movies on Netflix such as animated Oscar nominee 'Klaus', musical fantasy 'Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey', Santa-adventure duology 'The Christmas Chronicles', cosy rom-coms 'The Princess Switch' trilogy, 'Love Hard', queer rom-com 'Single All the Way', and family titles like 'A Boy Called Christmas', 'That Christmas' and body-swap comedy 'Family Switch'.

In other words, speaking only for 2025 itself, Netflix seems to have an already-packed holiday line-up that would only be enriched as soon as the acquisition takes effect in the coming years.

What Warner Bros brings: 'Elf', 'A Christmas Story' and other modern Christmas royalty

Where things get really interesting is what could happen once the Netflix–Warner Bros Discovery deal closes. Warner Bros controls some of the most recognisable festive films in modern pop culture, many of which are currently anchored to Max and linear channels like TBS and TNT.

Warner Bros' own holiday collection highlights a slate of Christmas staples that, for now, you won't find on Netflix, including:

• 'A Christmas Story' (1983)
• 'A Christmas Story Christmas' (2022, a Max Original sequel)
• 'Elf' (2003)
• 'Four Christmases' (2008)
• 'Gremlins' (1984)
• 'Jack Frost' (1998)
• 'Meet Me in St. Louis' (1944)
• 'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation' (1989)
• 'The Polar Express' (2004)

These titles sit at the centre of Warner Bros Discovery's holiday programming blocks and Max's 'That Time of Year' collection, which also folds in nostalgia picks like 'The Goonies', 'The Wizard of Oz', the 'Harry Potter' series and more.

Under today's arrangements, those movies are still firmly in the Warner Bros / Max ecosystem – and that's crucial for managing expectations about when they might ever appear in the Christmas movies on Netflix row.

The acquisition timeline: why Christmas 2025 won't change overnight

On 5 December 2025, Netflix and Warner Bros Discovery announced a definitive agreement for Netflix to acquire Warner Bros, including its film and TV studios, HBO and HBO Max, in a cash-and-stock deal valuing the business at an enterprise value of around $82.7 billion.

Key points from Netflix's own announcement are as follows:

• The acquisition only closes after Warner Bros Discovery spins off its global networks division into a separate company called Discovery Global, now expected in Q3 2026.
• The transaction is expected to complete 12–18 months after the announcement, meaning anywhere from late 2026 to mid-2027.
• Until then, Netflix and Warner Bros Discovery remain separate companies, with existing licensing deals and platform exclusivities still in force.

So while markets and media are already debating NFLX stock, WBD stock, strategy and whether this reshapes who owns HBO, Max or the DC Universe, in practical terms there is no immediate impact on what viewers can stream on Netflix this Christmas.

What Christmas could look like on Netflix after the Warner Bros deal

Where the Warner Bros acquisition becomes genuinely game-changing is in future holiday seasons, especially once catalogues begin to converge and legacy output deals expire. Netflix has already said it plans to maintain Warner Bros' current operations, including theatrical releases, while combining its 'world-class storytelling' with Netflix's global streaming reach.

Netflix's festive offering could include a 'classics' rail with 'A Christmas Story', 'Christmas Vacation', 'Elf', 'The Polar Express', 'Gremlins' and 'Meet Me in St. Louis'. 'That Time of Year'-style collections rebranded under Netflix will blend Warner's seasonal curation with Netflix originals like 'Klaus' and 'Jingle Jangle'. New Max Original holiday films will become day-and-date additions to Netflix once the services are rationalised. Cross-franchise stunts, like DC or 'Harry Potter' marathons alongside cozy rom-coms and family titles, could likely occur during December.

None of that is guaranteed just yet, as there will be legal, licensing and regulatory hurdles to untangle first. But strategically, folding the Warner library into Netflix would give the streaming platform an unprecedented grip on both new Christmas movies 2025-onwards and the classic holiday films audiences rewatch every year.

For now, the 2025 Christmas movies on Netflix are all about its own originals and licensed favourites.

If we end up on the 'nice' list, we could get the ultimate Kris Kringle-d scenario: where viewers scroll past 'Klaus', 'Elf', 'The Polar Express' and 'A Christmas Story Christmas' in a single Netflix row – hopefully in Christmas 2026 or 2027, but unfortunately, not this year.