Ridley Scott’s Gladiator reignited Hollywood’s love for the blockbuster historical epic, with a slew of spiritual successors arriving within the space of a few years.
On paper, Oliver Stone’s Alexander had all of the tools to be a major success. The Academy Award winning director had spent decades developing the project, and it was coming to theaters just six months after Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy made $497 million at the box office, so the appetite for swords and sandals was still very much there.
Unfortunately, Alexander ended up flopping pretty spectacularly after the $155 million effort limped to a haul of just $167 million from theaters. A 16% Rotten Tomatoes score made it abundantly clear that the woefully miscast Colin Farrell was the least of the movie’s problems, but that didn’t deter Stone from trying to get it right.
On top of the Director’s Cut, we also got Alexander Revisited: The Final Unrated Cut and Alexander: The Ultimate Cut on home video, although neither of them could quite manage to polish this particular turd. However, the vanilla version has exploded in popularity on Netflix after cracking the platform’s global most-watched list as per FlixPatrol, and it’s even reached second spot on the Canadian charts.