Netflix is never going to stop waving its checkbook at the biggest names in the industry to convince them to head to streaming for a high-profile original feature, which was proven yet again when the company snapped up its third acclaimed drama in a matter of weeks to take its total spending past $40 million, even if there’s always a danger the end results could turn out something like Reptile.
Director Grant Singer’s hard-boiled crime thriller was co-written by Benicio Del Toro, with the Academy Award-winning star also playing the lead role of a veteran detective dragged into a bubbling conspiracy when a murder investigation starts to uncover secrets that may have been better off left buried.
It sounds solid enough as a concept, but a 42 percent Rotten Tomatoes approval rating tells the other side of the story. In fact, despite debuting as the most-watched new English-language movie of the week by a wide margin, Reptile was far from being Netflix’s top-viewed feature-length debutant.
Spanish nail-biter Nowhere premiered on the same day, and as well as defeating Reptile to claim the number one spot on the global charts, it racked up bigger numbers, too. According to the company’s own data, the latter notched 40.2 million hours and 17.7 million views, whereas the former – despite being significantly smaller in terms of stature, scale, and star power – accrued 43.2 million hours and 23.8 million views.
Not for the first time – and definitely not for the last – a high-powered Hollywood hit has lost out to unheralded competition.
