An award-baiting A-list collaboration that crashed and burned wins a participation trophy on streaming

On paper, everyone was expecting last year’s A Journal for Jordan to be a potential Academy Award contender, and with very good reason.

Directed and produced by living legend Denzel Washington, who has two Oscars of his own from a whopping 10 nominations in total, and adapted from the moving memoir by Dana Canedy that focused on a soldier deployed to Iraq who kept the titular log for his young son back home, all while the onscreen version of Canedy recalls the story of her life-changing relationship with unyieldingly devoted family man Charles Monroe King.

The unstoppably charming, charismatic, and talented Michael B. Jordan played the lead role and donned a producorial hat of his own through his Outlier Society banner, with film fans salivating at the prospect of the two generation titans combining their talents to unleash a hard-hitting drama right in the thick of awards season. At least, until A Journal for Jordan actually released, and then the enthusiasm evaporated in an instant.

A 39 percent Rotten Tomatoes score was a crushing disappointment, and that’s without even mentioning a disastrous box office tally of under $7 million, shockingly bad for a $25 million project boasting Washington behind the camera and Jordan in front of it. The film crashed and burned in an instant, but name recognition is still a big draw on streaming.

Per FlixPatrol, A Journal for Jordan has shaken off its bad reputation to make an impact on Netflix’s most-watched list, even if the collaboration everyone wanted to see ended up delivering results nobody expected.