The Michael Fassbender flop Assassin's Creed has found a new life on Netflix. The movie, which is adapted from the video game franchise of the same name, premiered in 2016 and stars Fassbender as Callum Lynch, a death row inmate who discovers that he is a descendant of the assassin Aguilar and is given the ability to relive his memories. The movie, which cost $250 million before factoring in publicity costs, only made $240.7 million at the worldwide box office.
Per Netflix, the Assassin's Creed movie has joined the Top 10 titles on their global English-language movie chart. Even though it isn't even streaming in the United States, it has hit the Top 10 in 41 different territories and amassed 5,400,000 viewing hours, placing it at No. 5 on the chart. It landed even higher than the new Jennifer Lopez action movie The Mother, which launched this May.
Netflix has recently been fighting to maintain their reputation as the top dog in the streaming space. After losing subscribers for the first quarter in many years in 2022, they have radically reshifted their structure, including introducing an ad-supported tier and cracking down on password sharing. However, results like these Assassin's Creed viewership numbers show they still have the power to shape what people are watching.
In fact, Assassin's Creed isn't the first Fassbender flop to do well on the streaming service. 2017's The Snowman recently took No. 1 on the movie chart despite barely scraping together its production budget during its original run. The fact that it was new to Netflix, however, overcame its past box office history as well as its dismal reputation and 6 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.
It's possible that Assassin's Creed could rise even further up the chart, if The Snowman's performance is any indication. It could also get a huge boost if its availability is more directly tied to Netflix's Assassin's Creed series. The upcoming project is likely the reason the movie has joined the platform in the first place, so if big news from that project drops soon, it could become an even bigger online smash.
Source: Netflix