Is being a big draw on streaming the emptiest accolade in cinema?
The advent of the streaming era has completely altered the landscape of film and television, and it’s happened at a fascinating moment for the concept of the movie star.
These days, the lure of an established franchise or recognisable property is used as the primary marketing tactic to draw audiences into their local cinema. The number of names who can open a movie using nothing more than their name and reputation is in shorter supply than ever before.
However, an A-lister or popular performer can almost always guarantee a smash hit on demand, although it’s not even in the same ballpark as topping the box office. Streaming is easy, convenient, and cheaper than visiting the multiplex multiple times per month. As a result, it’s a lot easier to be branded a major draw in that arena than it is in the decidedly riskier world of theatrical cinema.
Take Jennifer Lopez, for example. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Hustlers is the only good movie she’s made to have hit cinemas throughout the entire 21st century so far. Plenty of them have flopped, but she’s pivoted her attention to streaming-only films and suddenly become a barometer of success.
The insipid rom-com Marry Me premiered simultaneously on the big screen and on Peacock, where it became the most-watched premiere in the platform’s history. Shotgun Wedding was pulled from cinemas and sent to Prime Video, where it proved so must-see it was credited with driving a 9% increase in viewership across the entire streaming service in the month it was released. The Mother is the sixth most-watched original movie in Netflix history, and Atlas hit number one in 71 countries around the world.
They’re all equally forgettable but indicative of how a worldwide star is the easiest way to secure a streaming smash hit. At various points, Ryan Reynolds has seen three of his efforts reside in Netflix’s all-time top ten, but what sort of cultural footprint was left behind by Michael Bay’s 6 Underground, The Adam Project, or Red Notice? Just ask Quentin Tarantino.
Speaking of the latter, Dwayne Johnson watched Black Adam perform so poorly he was immediately exiled from DC’s expanded universe in both live-action and animation. It’s surely not a coincidence that his next role in The Smashing Machine marks his first straightforward dramatic turn ever at a time when questions are being asked over his continued big-screen bankability.
There’s plenty of evidence to underline that Ryan Gosling is not a draw in a theatrical sense, but The Gray Man is one of streaming’s top-viewed titles ever. Following her breakout role in Stranger Things, Millie Bobby Brown has emerged as one of Netflix’s crown jewels, with the two Enola Holmes capers and Damsel all occupying the all-time top ten at one point or another. However, she’s only ever been in two movies that hit cinemas, and both of them were Godzilla sequels, so there’s no indication if her appeal extends beyond the small screen.
Mad Max prequel Furiosa marks the latest in a long line of non-Marvel Chris Hemsworth efforts to under-perform in terms of ticket sales, and yet Extraction and its sequel are among Netflix’s most popular in-house productions ever. Adam Sandler is about as bulletproof as it gets whenever anything slapped with the Happy Madison branding drops on streaming, but because it’s been almost a decade since he appeared in one of the company’s theatrically released efforts, there’s no way of knowing if that would translate into cold, hard cash almost 30 years on from his breakthrough.
The assortment of streamers love to tout viewing hours, cumulative hours watched, algorithms, and opening weekends whenever it suits, but it’s an empty accolade. Grab an A-lister, put them in a genre flick, and it’s a sure-fire win. That’s not a quantifiable metric, though, and the old-fashioned way of determining which stars shine brightest continues to be the classic and inarguable method of individual ticket sales, not monthly subscription fees shelled out per household.
