The latest Nielsen ratings are in, revealing the most popular titles across all streaming platforms over the last week of January. Every entry in the Top 10 ranking comes from Netflix, including hit TV series like Bridgerton, Fate: The Winx Saga and Cobra Kai. A single movie made it onto the list, however, and it’s a surprising one. Yes, the most watched film on all streaming platforms right now, according to the most recent ratings, is 2010’s The Next Three Days, a little-remembered thriller starring Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks.
The film, from Crash director Paul Haggis, is sitting at #8 in the rankings, squeezed in between Outlander at #7 and Cobra Kai at #9. In total, it was viewed for 646 million minutes over the course of the week, which is an unusually high number for a movie, let alone one that’s 11 years old. Old TV shows are frequently binged over and over by streaming audiences, hence Criminal Minds landing the #1 slot on this list, but it’s rare for an old film to find the same kind of success.
In The Next Three Days, Lara Brennan (Banks) is wrongly convicted of murdering her boss, leading to her husband John (Russell Crowe) becoming obsessed with finding a way to break her out of prison. To do this, he partners up with Damon Pennington (Liam Neeson), a former inmate who wrote a book on escaping jail. When he discovers Lara is being transferred to a different facility in three days, John must move his plans forward.
Despite its newfound popularity, the movie wasn’t particularly well-received at the time. It sits at 51% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critical consensus reading: “Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks give it their all, but their solid performances aren’t quite enough to compensate for The Next Three Days‘ uneven pace and implausible plot.” That said, its audience score is slightly higher at 66% and while things might change once the next set of ratings are announced, as of now, it holds the crown of the most popular movie on streaming.
