A movie starring Ashton Kutcher has been climbing the Netflix top 10 chart, despite being one of his biggest critical failures – once again proving that a flop can enjoy a new lease of life on streaming.
We’ve seen this situation time and again on Netflix. This week alone, the forgotten 2011 Channing Tatum movie The Eagle hit the platform, where it currently sits in fifth spot despite its disappointing box office turnout and a 29% Tomatometer score.
Then there’s the 2017 Woody Woodpecker film, which earned just $15.3 million off of its $10 million budget and landed at 13% on Rotten Tomatoes – but the family flick has inexplicably reached first place on Netflix’s chart.
There are numerous reasons why this can happen, from convenience to marketing to competition at the time of release. Whatever the case, the phenomenon is unfolding once more with an Ashton Kutcher flop.
One of Ashton Kutcher’s worst movies reaches #2 on Netflix’s top 10
At the time of writing, the 2010 romcom-action movie Killers, starring Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl, is currently sitting in second place on Netflix’s Top 10 movie chart, despite only earning 10% from critics and 41% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.
Check out the trailer below:
Not only did it get bad reviews, but the movie was a commercial failure, with a box office haul of $98.2 million against a $75 million budget. As such, Killers proves to be yet another anomaly, as thousands of Netflix subscribers tune in and drive those viewing figures up after it was added to the platform at the start of the month.
As we’ve mentioned in the past, movies and shows tend to do well on Netflix if they’ve got a big name attached to them. This happened with The Snowman, aka one of the worst movies of the 2010s, as well as The Eagle, GI Joe Retaliation, and The Call, to name a few.
In this case it’s Kutcher, who has been in the news recently due to his controversial character letter defending Danny Masterson. Heigl may have drawn interest too, as she’s the co-lead star of the streamer’s wildly popular series Firefly Lane.
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As for what Killers is all about, the official synopsis reads: “Three years after a fateful trip to the French Riviera, Jen (Heigl) enjoys the good life in suburbia with her handsome husband, Spencer (Kutcher).
“That comes crashing down, however, when gunfire rings out the morning after his 30th birthday. It turns out that Spencer has not been honest with Jen about his job; he’s a deadly spy. Now she must learn to dodge bullets while keeping up an appearance of normalcy.”
While the film is clearly enjoying success on Netflix, the situation has left people baffled, especially amid the Masterson scandal. “Hard to believe @netflix is saying the movie #Killers with disgusting Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) is trending as #2 in top 10 movies right now. Either this is a bad algorithm or the misogynistic ass is pushing PR BS,” said one X/Twitter user.
Even co-writer Bob DeRosa is confused, writing: “And now KILLERS is #3 out of all movies on Netflix! Seriously, this makes no sense. It would be nice to know why the sudden spike, but that would mean having some sort of access to the streaming data… which is one reason we’re striking. But hey, it’s nice to be #3 for a moment!”
But there may be a reason for the sudden spike. As said by one user: “My dad is randomly watching Killers with Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher and cackling loudly so I can only assume it’s randomly the #1 movie on Netflix this week probably?”
A second, who appears to have a vendetta against Woody Woodpecker, wrote: “Everyone watch Killers on Netflix and defeat that annoying bird!”
For more Netflix content, hit the links below:
The Gentlemen | Will there be Firefly Lane Season 3? | Sex Education Season 4 | Beef Season 2 | Monster Season 2 | Will there be Ginny and Georgia Season 3? | Black Mirror Season 7 | All the Light We Cannot See | Stranger Things Season 5 | Florida Man Season 2 | Obsession Season 2 | The Sandman Season 2 | The Lincoln Lawyer Season 3 | Bodies