There’s a strange kind of second life that some films find once the theater lights go dark and the opening weekend shame fades away. A movie can vanish from multiplexes in a matter of weeks, get written off as a financial disaster, and then reappear months later at the top of a streaming chart with tens of millions of viewers. It happens more than the industry publicly admits.
The gap between box office performance and streaming popularity has widened considerably in the 2020s. Blu-rays and DVDs have become obsolete for many people, and unless there’s a major cinematic event, most audiences don’t feel the need to spend the money or time going to the theater. They’d rather wait a couple of months for a film to be available to stream or rent, then watch it from the comfort of home. These seven films felt that shift firsthand.
Madame Web (2024) – From Marvel’s Most Mocked Movie to Netflix’s Top Spot
Madame Web grossed a dismal $100 million worldwide against a production budget of $80 million. But this box office bomb was rescued from the depths of despair by streaming giant Netflix. Madame Web debuted at number one on Netflix’s Top 10 Movies list, clocking in a total of 1.16 billion minutes watched during its first week.
When Madame Web hit Netflix, it flew up the streamer’s charts, becoming very popular with viewers despite its negative reception upon release. After landing on May 15, the film dominated the streamer’s charts, sitting at number one in several countries including the US. Nearly two years after its theatrical release, Madame Web continued crawling its way up the charts of Prime Video as well, landing in third place globally according to FlixPatrol. Whether viewers arrived out of curiosity or a taste for the spectacularly strange, the numbers were impossible to dismiss.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) – A Critical Darling That Nobody Paid to See
Anya Taylor-Joy landed the role of Furiosa in 2024’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the fifth movie in George Miller’s dystopian sci-fi franchise. Despite very strong reviews, maintaining a critical score of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, Furiosa was a major commercial flop, grossing around $174 million on a budget of $168 million. It was a maddening result for one of the year’s most ambitious action films.
The film then saw significant streaming success. As of early March 2026, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga ranked among the top ten movies in the world on Netflix per FlixPatrol. Furiosa was previously a Netflix hit at the beginning of 2025, immediately after its theatrical run, and it has still been able to have occasional resurgences. For a film that barely broke even at the box office, that kind of sustained streaming presence is remarkable.
The Fall Guy (2024) – Peacock’s Big Win After a Theatrical Stumble
The Fall Guy wasn’t as big a hit as its high budget demanded, grossing only $181 million on a budget that was likely as high as $150 million. The Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt action comedy was critically well-received and carried two of the biggest names from the Barbenheimer summer, yet audiences simply didn’t show up in theaters. It was interesting that the film wasn’t a theatrical hit, since Gosling and Blunt had starred in Barbie and Oppenheimer, two of the biggest hits of 2023.
The Fall Guy eventually made its way to Peacock and became a massive hit for the streamer, and the platform also debuted an extended cut that gave viewers more incentive to rewatch the film. The Fall Guy had an incredible streaming debut after being added to Peacock, making it appear that many viewers were simply waiting for the film to be available at home. The lesson here may be that some movies simply belong on a couch.
Encanto (2021) – Disney’s Quiet Miracle That Only Became a Phenomenon at Home
Kids all over the world watched Encanto over and over again once it hit streaming, and the soundtrack became inescapable, so it’s easy to forget that the film only made $256 million worldwide. While that is a large number, it’s on the lower end for a Disney animated film, and one as beloved as Encanto. The film was released in late 2021 when theaters were still recovering from the shutdown, so families were understandably hesitant to go back.
Encanto became a worldwide phenomenon, with music that broke Frozen records, and fans couldn’t stop watching it on Disney+. Ever since it arrived on Disney+ at the end of December, it was the most popular film on any streaming service, dominating viewership charts week after week. During one seven-day stretch, Encanto was viewed for a total of 864 million minutes, topping every other film from every other streaming service in that span. A theatrical disappointment turned into one of Disney’s most culturally impactful releases of the decade.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024) – A War Film That Won the Streaming Battle
Henry Cavill’s second major release of 2024 was Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, starring opposite Alan Ritchson and Eiza González. The plot is inspired by the real-life Operation Postmaster and follows a special unit of elite agents tasked with sabotaging a Nazi U-boat resupply operation on the island of Fernando Po. It arrived in April with little fanfare and departed theaters even faster.
Opening in April, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare failed to gain traction at the box office. The film later became a bona fide streaming hit, spending weeks on the iTunes Top 10 and ranking consistently in Prime Video’s Top 10 following its international debut on the platform. Cavill and González reunited with Ritchie for 2025’s In the Grey, co-starring Jake Gyllenhaal, meaning the legacy of this film continues to grow. A wartime adventure that theaters overlooked found its rightful audience once the barrier of a ticket price disappeared.
The Suicide Squad (2021) – James Gunn’s Best Work, Buried by a Pandemic
James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad only made $168.7 million at the box office, making it one of the lowest-grossing comic book movies of its scale. The simultaneous streaming-and-theater release strategy Warner Bros. deployed in 2021 split its audience in two before the film had any chance to build momentum through word of mouth. Things became even more complicated when Warner Bros. released all of their movies on streaming simultaneously with their theatrical release that year.
Despite those low box office numbers, The Suicide Squad was one of the most-watched movies on HBO Max in 2021. On one Saturday alone, 1.2 million US households watched the film on HBO Max, while the following Friday brought in over 949,000 first-time viewers in a single day. For a film this inventive and sharply made, the streaming numbers at least reflected what the box office could not. It deserved a louder theatrical run, and the audience that found it later clearly agreed.
M3GAN 2.0 (2025) – A Sequel That Flopped in Theaters and Dominated Everywhere Else
While the first M3GAN was a word-of-mouth hit back in 2023, grossing $181 million on a budget of just $12 million, the sequel only made $39 million at the box office with a reported budget of $15 to $25 million. The genre shift from horror to action and a sharp drop in critical reception contributed to audiences staying away. Weaker reviews, with just 58% on Rotten Tomatoes compared to the first film’s 93%, played a part in its disappointing theatrical showing.
Still, the sci-fi sequel became a top-three hit on Netflix in the U.S., hit the top six on its worldwide charts, and then followed that up by becoming the number one global movie on HBO Max according to FlixPatrol. It’s an entertaining, funny movie, and watching it at home on a service you already subscribe to makes it easy to understand why it performed so well on both HBO Max and Netflix. Sometimes a film’s second audience is simply more forgiving, and more available, than its first.
The pattern across all seven of these films points to something real about how viewing habits have shifted. A film’s time in theaters isn’t always a great predictor of later success. There are various reasons why a movie could fail at the box office: poor marketing, stiff competition from other releases, or the lingering reluctance of audiences to return to theaters. Whatever the case, many films have flopped theatrically and gone on to find great success on streaming. The box office verdict may always come first, but for these seven films, it was never the final word.
