“The Gray Man” is no “Red Notice,” but it was certainly no slouch over Netflix’s opening weekend. Its box-office week is another story.
No gray area here: With 88.55 million hours watched in its first three days, “The Gray Man,” starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans, had Netflix’s fifth-best movie launch week since the streamer began keeping (and publishing) records in early last year summer. See the article : Netflix Top Movies and Series: What’s trending on July 8, 2022. The film ranking includes both English and non-English titles, although no foreign-language film comes close to making Netflix’s all-time top 5.
“Spy vs. Spy” blew away its closest competition, “Sea Beast,” with nearly 55 million more hours watched last week. The children’s film was in its third week and thus counted for seven days of viewership. Last week, the second most available and the first full week on the platform, was the best so far for “The Sea Beast” with 68.11 million hours watched.
“The Gray Man” enjoyed the most-watched opening weekend for a film on Netflix since “The Adam Project” amassed 92.43 million hours in March. Other movies that opened better (than “Grey Man”) on Netflix were “Red Notice” (148.72 million watch hours), “Don’t Look Up” (111.03 million watch hours) and “The Kissing Booth 3” (90.86 million viewing hours). “The Gray Man” reached number one on Netflix in 84 countries.
These days, Netflix releases the vast majority of its series and movies on Fridays. “The Kissing Booth 3” premiered on Wednesday, however, giving it a two-day lead in availability over the rest of Netflix’s Top 5 Movie Premieres of All Time.
A week before its Netflix debut, Netflix released The Gray Man in just under 500 theaters. In its opening weekend, the film brought in around $200,000 to $250,000 at the box office. That figure probably translates to $300,000-$375,000 per week. Like “Red Notice”, “The Gray Man” had a huge budget (for the streaming film) of 200 million dollars. The other films in this story were significantly cheaper to make.
“The Gray Man” lasts 2 hours and 2 minutes. If it were as easy as dividing the total number of hours watched by the running time, that would mean 43.55 million people worldwide streamed the movie last weekend. Of course, it’s not nearly as simple as that, and Netflix doesn’t provide accurate viewership data to the public (or the media). Surely super fans have watched it multiple times; definitely more people tried and quit.
Multiplying that very basic breakdown by the world’s average movie ticket price to suggest a potential return to movie theaters would give you some incredibly bad math. Do that if you want, but you’ll be wildly overestimating the film’s potential at the box office.
Suffice it to say, “The Gray Man” had very little in theaters and a lot on streaming. And soon they will do even more.
Earlier on Tuesday, Netflix announced that it is turning “The Gray Man” into a franchise that will include a sequel (again starring Gosling and again directed by Joe and Anthony Russo) as well as a spinoff film. AGBO’s Russos and Mike Larocca will produce alongside Joe Roth and Jeffrey Kirschenbaum for Roth Kirschenbaum Films. “The Gray Man” co-writer Stephen McFeely (“Avengers: Endgame,” “Captain America: Civil War”) is writing the sequel.
The spin-off will be written by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese. That sequel is “set to explore a different element of the ‘Grey Man’ universe” with a logline still under wraps. No word yet on whether Ana de Armas, Billy Bob Thornton or Regé-Jean Page will reprise their roles in either project.
“Audience response to ‘The Gray Man’ has been nothing short of phenomenal,” the Russo brothers said in a statement Tuesday. “We so appreciate the enthusiasm that fans around the world have had for this film. With so many amazing characters in the film, we’ve always intended for ‘The Gray Man’ to be part of an expanded universe, and we’re thrilled that Netflix is announcing a sequel with Ryan, as well as another script that we’re excited to discuss soon.”
“The Gray Man” is based on the bestselling series by Mark Greaney.
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