As if anyone needed any further reminders that people love Keanu Reeves, one of the worst movies he’s ever been in that can also comfortably be named as one of the most interminably dull big budget blockbusters of the last decade has been dominating Netflix’s most-watched list all month, with 47 Ronin inexplicably still drawing in a huge audience on the platform.
Poor Carl Rinsch torpedoed his own feature film career on the very first attempt after getting way in over his head, which ultimately led to him being removed from the project during post-production. Then again, handing a first-time director $225 million is always a risk, especially with something like 47 Ronin that doesn’t have name recognition or a built-in audience to fall back on.
It flopped spectacularly at the box office after just about scraping past the $150 million mark, while it holds a Rotten Tomatoes score of only 16%, although in excess of 50,000 voters have seen its audience rating rise to a much better 48%, and it’s been developing something of a cult favorite status over the last eight years. Not only that, but despite losing a whole lot of money and being widely panned by critics, 47 Ronin‘s performance on Netflix is very good news for the streamer, who announced that a sequel was in development last year.
Not just any sequel, however, with the next chapter in the unlikely franchise set 300 years in the future. Prison Break, Sons of Anarchy and Mulan star Ron Yuan will direct and play the lead role in what’s been described as a blend of the martial arts, horror, sci-fi, action and cyberpunk genres, which sounds so batsh*t crazy that it actually could be kind of awesome.
