BBC confirms 2025 Christmas movies line-up with one of the best films of the decade
Some amazing movies are coming to the BBC and iPlayer for Christmas
The BBC has confirmed which movies are part of its 2025 Christmas TV line-up – and it includes one of the best films of the decade (if not the century).
After gorging on turkey, roast potatoes, and chocolate, millions of people across the UK will plonk themselves down in front of the telly on Christmas Day.
The BBC is a mainstay of the festive season, and its holiday offerings are particularly strong this year. For example, there’s the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special, Call the Midwife, and Amandaland.
There are also seven big movies coming to the BBC and iPlayer over the Christmas period. Here’s what you need to know.
BBC One Christmas movies schedule 2025
Christmas Eve
- Puss in Boots: 10:45am
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: 2:55pm
- Paddington: 5:30pm
Christmas Day
- Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl: 11:40am
- Matilda the Musical: 1pm
- When Harry Met Sally: 11:35pm
Boxing Day
- Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: 10:45am
- Peter Rabbit: 12pm
- Minions: The Rise of Gru: 2pm
- Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: 3:20pm
- Paddington 2: 5:20pn
- Four Weddings and a Funeral: 10:15pm
December 27
- Despicable Me 2: 1:35pm
- How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World: 3:10pm
- Elvis: 7:45pm
December 28
- Chicken Run: 10:15am
- Shakespeare in Love: 12:15am
December 29
- Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway: 1:15pm
- Back to the Future: 2:40pm
- Clueless: 11pm
December 30
- Croods 2: The New Age: 9:25am
- Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile: 1:10pm
- Back to the Future Part 2: 2:50pm
December 31
- Marcel the Shell with Shoes On: 9:30am
- Back to the Future Part III: 2pm
- Despicable Me 3: 3:55pm
- Mission: Impossible: 8:30pm
January 1
- Abominable: 9:15am
- Minions: The Rise of Gru: 10:40am
- The Sound of Music: 3:15pm
- Mission: Impossible 2: 11:25pm
The best movies to watch on the BBC this Christmas
Elvis
- Genre: Biography, Drama
- Year: 2022
- Cast: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge
- Director: Baz Luhrmann
- Runtime: 2 hours 39 minutes
What it’s about: Elvis Presley, a young, charismatic singer from Mississippi, rises to fame under the dubious control of his enigmatic manager, Colonel Tom Parker. As he reaches unprecedented levels of stardom – and meets the love of his life, Priscilla – he starts to lose control.
Why to watch: The biopic genre gets all shook up in Elvis, a dazzling, splashy jukebox chronicle of the king of rock’s turbulent, epic life.
Tom Hanks plays unrecognisably against type, while Austin Butler delivers a career-defining performance as the titular singer (to the point it’s permanently changed his voice in real life).
Don’t just take it from us: Priscilla Presley said it made her cry within five minutes and that Butler captured her late husband “beautifully”.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
- Genre: Animation, Family
- Year: 2022
- Cast: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek Pinault, Harvey Guillén
- Director: Joel Crawford
- Runtime: 1 hour 42 minutes
What it’s about: Puss in Boots, the swashbuckling, sword-twirling cat from the Shrek movies, only has one of his nine lives left. Instead of retiring, he heads into the Black Forest to find a mythical Wishing Star – and he’ll need to face off against Death itself.
Why to watch: The Puss in Boots franchise was a gamble; how do you live up to the astronomically iconic stature of Shrek?
However, while the first two films in the spin-off series were perfectly fine, The Last Wish is extraordinary. As ridiculous as it sounds, it’s the franchise’s answer to Logan: a sweet, emotional, and exciting adventure with some of the best animated set pieces you’ll ever see.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
- Genre: Animation, Action
- Year: 2023
- Cast: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar Isaac
- Directors: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson
- Runtime: 2 hours 20 minutes
What it’s about: Miles Morales, Brooklyn’s newest friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, joins forces with Gwen Stacy to take on a new villain: the Spot. However, he comes into conflict with a vast legion of Spider-People in the multiverse, led by Spider-Man 2099.
Why to watch: How do you top one of the best animated movies ever made? You go bigger and better, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, a meticulous, breathtaking sequel, makes it look easy.
There is still one movie to come in this trilogy, but going by the standard of the first two films, this may be the greatest on-screen Spider-Man story ever told. If you watch one film on TV as a family, this should be it.
Oppenheimer
- Genre: Drama, War
- Year: 2023
- Cast: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon
- Director: Christopher Nolan
- Runtime: 3 hours
What it’s about: At the height of the Second World War, J. Robert Oppenheimer is recruited for a top-secret project: to create an atomic bomb, a revolutionary, catastrophic weapon that haunts him for the rest of his life.
Why to watch: Oppenheimer isn’t Christopher Nolan’s best film (that honour goes to Interstellar), but it is the culmination of his directing oeuvre.
Is it the quickest three-hour movie ever? It could be, barreling towards its inevitable boom with a breathless rhythm. You’d think a three-hour, part-black-and-white epic about the atomic bomb wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it almost made $1 billion. You could say… they heard the music.”
Oppenheimer will be shown on BBC Two at 9pm on December 21.
Operation Mincemeat
- Genre: War, Drama
- Year: 2021
- Cast: Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen, Kelly Macdonald
- Director: John Madden
- Runtime: 2 hours 8 minutes
What it’s about: In 1943, two British intelligence officers come up with a cunning plan to dupe the Nazis and break Adolf Hitler’s grip on occupied Europe: planting a corpse with false papers in Spain.
Why to watch: Operation Mincemeat is a vintage home front British movie: well-cast, with a wry, cosy sense of humour, and an endearing reverence that will have you diving into the Wikipedia of the real-life operation.
In this case, the facts are actually more outlandish than the film, but the movie is a thoroughly entertaining version of the story. It’s also the final film appearance of Friday Night Dinner and Chernobyl star Paul Ritter.
Oppenheimer will be shown on BBC Two at 9pm on January 2.
Challengers
- Genre: Drama, Romance
- Year: 2024
- Cast: Zendaya, Mike Faist, Josh O’Connor
- Director: Luca Guadagnino
- Runtime: 2 hours 11 minutes
What it’s about: Tashi Duncan, a former tennis prodigy, has transformed her husband, Art, into a champion. However, in the midst of a losing streak, they find themselves pitted against an old friend.
Why to watch: Challengers is a modern rarity. It’s not sexually explicit, but it is an erotically charged (in every direction) response to the plague of prudes.
It’s also powered by three mega-watt star performances – best of all, Zendaya, whose fiery, spiky screen presence will convince anyone of her talents. Prepare to listen to the score on loop for a week.
Challengers will be shown on BBC One at 10:40pm on December 22.
Read more: The 30 best films on BBC iPlayer right now
