Netflix Tudum 2025 was wild, and other events should take note

Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of travelling to LA to attend Netflix Tudum 2025. As the streamer’s latest annual fan event, Tudum 2025 featured all kinds of reveals for upcoming Netflix titles, as well as celebrity guests and even a few musical performances. Sofia Carson (Carry-On) served as host.

While I’ve had the privilege of getting to go to many entertainment shows, especially in the video game space, I’ve got to say: I’ve never seen anything quite like Tudum.

First, I should note that I’ve seen some people question who, exactly, Tudum is for, given its attempt to offer a bit of everything that will appeal to pretty much everyone. And sure, it is amusing to consider that there’s an event so eclectic and wild as to feature eight-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close talking about the next Knives Out movie, wrestling stars like CM Punk and Rhea Ripley showing up to remind us of Netflix’s big WWE deal, the Cookie Monster meeting Ben Affleck and Matt Damon ahead of promoting their gritty crime thriller The Rip, and a Wednesday-themed Lady Gaga performance, among other Mad Libs-like combinations.

Jenna Ortega and Lady Gaga at Tudum 2025. (Image credit: Netflix)

But let’s be clear: since its inception five years ago, Tudum has always been presented, first and foremost, as a fan-driven event. It’s meant to be fun and flashy, not unlike an MTV or People’s Choice Awards. It’s open about what it is, and I honestly find that refreshing when, say, Google I/O and Apple WWDC are now largely about AI being shoved down your throat under the guise of “improving lives.”

Even something more up my alley, like The Game Awards, is often padded out with gratuitous celebrity cameos that have little or nothing to do with a given game. Tudum, to its credit, is focused on (marketing through) entertainment, and it does it with the talent that’s core to its business. And truthfully, that sort of zany hodgepodge lineup of movies, shows and stars is part of the appeal. (Video game fans: tell me you don’t have fond memories of silly moments like Usher performing for Just Dance at the now-cancelled E3.)

But even ignoring that generalist perspective, many of the individual shows featured at Tudum will inarguably be a huge draw for Millennials, especially. Wednesday alone is massive, in no small part because of Jenna Ortega’s massive popularity. (She easily got the loudest cheer from the audience outside of Gaga herself.) That’s to say nothing of the global popularity of the likes of scripted series like Squid Game, One Piece and Stranger Things, or reality shows like Too Hot to Handle and Selling Sunset.

And to be clear, I’m not even a fan of many of these shows. (I especially don’t care for reality TV.) Outside of video games, my preferred art form, I spend the bulk of my entertainment viewing time on movies. That means I don’t generally watch many TV shows, be they on Netflix, Crave, Apple TV+ or the like. But even to that point, Tudum provided updates on two of my most anticipated 2025 movies: Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (coming December 12, 2025) and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (November). I expect the former should be another gloriously entertaining whodunnit from Johnson, with the latter being a visually stunning and haunting take on Frankenstein from the master of monsters, Del Toro.

Writer-director Rian Johnson and the Wake Up Dead Man cast at Tudum 2025.

There were a few other notable movies as well. I’m certainly intrigued by The Rip, which looks to be a tense thriller about a group of cops discovering a large sum of cash and dealing with the fallout. “Are we the good guys?” Matt Damon’s police officer questions, suggesting a larger, morally grey narrative. (Ben Affleck said the film draws inspiration from genre classics like Heat and Training Day, and that influence is certainly visible, even if I doubt it’ll come anywhere close to being as good.) And of course, Happy Gilmore 2 will undeniably be huge for most, even if I’ve never been a fan of Adam Sandler. (And even then, I could still appreciate having real American sports commentator Rich Eisen hosting a live “press conference” with Sandler and co-stars Julie Bowen and Christopher McDonald.)

Tudum being an annual event also makes it feel more unique. In the gaming and tech spaces, the flurry of showcases and press conferences can really start to drag, especially as they just prattle on about AI for hours straight. But knowing you get Tudum once a year certainly does make it a bit more special.

On top of that, it’s just a really well-paced show. Again, I’ve sat through many events, and some of them feel insanely long. The Game Awards, in particular, can be a messy one, as it attempts to both recognize the best in games while also promoting what’s to come, resulting in a show that often feels bloated at nearly four hours long.

The One Piece cast “talk” to Tony Tony Chopper.

But Tudum, coming in just under two hours, felt quite tight. A key part of that is because it didn’t linger on any given title for too long, and even the ones that got more time at least did something a little more interesting with the reveal. For Squid Game, there was an elaborate dance number with the (guards?) and Indian artist Hanumankind. For One Piece, that was Iñaki Godoy and his fellow Straw Hats “talking” to the screen to reveal fan-favourite Tony Tony Chopper (Mikaela Hoover). For the boy band documentary Building the Band, Backstreet Boy AJ McLean came out and danced with Carson to the tune of “Backstreet’s Back.”

That’s to say nothing of my particular highlights. For Wake Up Dead Man, we got a fun bit in which Netflix played into the twisty-turny narrative of a whodunnit by having members of the cast reveal themselves in increasingly dramatic ways. And even though I’ve never seen Wednesday, that show led to us being treated to an absolutely incredible Lady Gaga performance. Seeing that live was truly spectacular, but naturally, Little Monsters back home would have also adored it.

Again, I compare all of this to a video game event where a celebrity who is tangentially — or maybe not even at all — related to the title at hand, like Timothée Chalamet at The Game Awards 2023. That obviously isn’t a problem for Tudum when it’s quintessentially a Hollywood event. And even when there isn’t that sort of out-of-place Tinsel town pandering in video game events, they often tend to just have a rather simple, low-energy structure of showing trailer after trailer without much in the way of unique presentation. This made me really appreciate all of the different ways that announcements were made at Tudum, from witty talent interactions to glossy musical performances, even in instances when a given title didn’t personally appeal to me.

Noah Schnapp, Caleb McLaughlin and Vancouver’s Finn Wolfhard reminisce about their Stranger Things careers.

And above all else, Tudum was a clear success even if you didn’t tune into the show itself. After all, much of the buzzworthy news would have almost certainly made it to you anyway, especially through social media or YouTube. Even if all you saw out of Tudum was a trailer or two for one of the flagship titles, that would still be a win for Netflix. For instance, the people who have been waiting three years for the final season of Stranger Things could have just watched the emotional Tudum trailer that confirms the staggered release dates. (And if you did watch Tudum, you got that extra nostalgic bonus of Vancouver’s Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin and Noah Schnapp reminiscing about earlier seasons and showing how much they’ve grown over the past decade.)

Yes, Tudum is ultimately a marketing event, just like pretty much anything else in the entertainment business. But the way in which it’s done is undeniably entertaining and unique. Given all of the other bloated and boring events out there, I have a bigger appreciation now for Tudum. And now, I eagerly wait for Wake Up Dead Man and Frankenstein.