When it comes to naming and shaming the biggest box office bombs of any given year, the ire generally tends to be focused on the movies that ended up being panned by critics in addition to cratering in theaters, which has in turn given the acclaimed Devotion something of a free pass.
2022 endured its fair share of duds, a roster of ignominy that numbered Jared Leto’s reprehensible Morbius, Roland Emmerich’s tedious Moonfall, Damiel Chazelle’s wildly divisive Babylon, Pixar’s unnecessary Lightyear, and Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam to name but a small few. The recurring theme is that none of them found much critical acclaim, unlike J.D. Dillard’s stirring war epic.
Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a healthy 81 percent score, audiences were even more receptive to Devotion, looking at its superior 91 percent user average. Without question one of the most underrated, overlooked, and little-seen gems of the last 12 months, it nonetheless can’t be ignored that the inspirational biographical drama was also a colossal flop.
On a budget of $90 million, Devotion couldn’t even reach $22 million in ticket sales, with paying customers perhaps burned out on dogfighting in the aftermath of Top Gun: Maverick. Thankfully, the excellent Korean War adventure boasting a pair of powerhouse performances from Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell has finally found the size of crowd it deserves on streaming.
Per FlixPatrol, not only is Devotion a Top 10 hit on Netflix in seven countries split across two continents, it’s also the number one most-watched feature in multiple nations on Prime Video, the second top-viewed title on Paramount Plus among subscribers in the United States, and a resident of the iTunes global rankings, too.