If you take a director who’d made history as the first person to win both an Emmy and Directors Guild Award in the same year, hand them a $50 million budget and the adaptation of a popular novel, rope in several recognizable and popular stars, the producers of a legendary multi-billion dollar franchise and then allow them to cut loose in the action thriller arena, The Rhythm Section definitely sounds like a winner.
Instead, Reed Morano’s bone-crunching exercise in banality – produced by James Bond overlords Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli – with a plot that found Blake Lively embarking on a quest for revenge following the death of her family in a plane crash became such a colossal box office bomb that it ended up breaking multiple records, which is an embarrassing fate to befall an explosive offering that also featured Jude Law and Sterling K. Brown among its ensemble.
Initially projected to score a double-digit opening weekend, The Rhythm Section instead had to make to do with a $2.8 million three-day debut, which was the worst ever for any feature playing in 3000 theaters or more. In its third weekend, it was yanked from 97.5% of its screens – shattering another milestone in the process – before meekly exiting the multiplex with just $6 million to show for it.
“Disastrous” doesn’t even begin to cover it, but despite its infamous legacy and respective Rotten Tomatoes scores of only 28 and 44 percent from critics and crowds, the unmitigated flop of epic proportions has found a new home on streaming. Per FlixPatrol, The Rhythm Section is currently one of the most-watched titles on Starz’, which is a small and tender mercy if ever there was one.