Alan Ritchson’s New Action Movie Just Hit A Major Netflix Milestone

Alan Ritchson‘s newest action movie just finished an impressive run on Netflix, which netted the film a considerable milestone on the streaming service. Over the years, Alan Ritchson’s career has taken a varied and fascinating path, with some recognising the actor best for his role as Aquaman in Smallville, some recognizing him best for his appearance in horror series Black Mirror or comedy series like New Girl, and many now knowing the star for his selection of roles in the world of the action genre.

With Alan Ritchson’s recent roles as the lead of popular Prime Video action series Reacher and in an assortment of action films such as The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare making him even more of a household name in recent years, it’s no surprise that more of the actor’s movies have made their way to Netflix, and have proved decidedly successful on the platform too.

Indeed, Alan Ritchson’s most recent action movie has garnered itself a solid record on Netflix over the course of its run thus far, demonstrating the actor’s popularity at this point in time, and showing how movies that hit the right level of intrigue for Netflix’s audience can garner hundreds of thousands of hours of viewtime in the span of just weeks.

War Machine Just Went 2 Months In Netflix’s Weekly Top 10 Movies

While the conventional norm for movies tends to be them reaching the top of Netflix’s global weekly leaderboards in terms of view time for a week or two at most, War Machine broke this norm by a fair margin. The film resided in Netflix’s weekly top 10 most-watched movies for 8 weeks, with it first appearing in this roster in the week of its Netflix release on March 6, and this run only ending in the week of April 27–May 3 (as per Netflix’s official statistics on Tudum).

This feat is all the more striking given that War Machine ended its run in Netflix’s most-watched movies as the film with the longest active streak in this regard other than KPop Demon Hunters during April 20–26. This is itself a considerable achievement, since KPop Demon Hunters is almost at a full year in Netflix’s most-watched film charts, and is the platform’s most popular film of all time, meaning coming in second is still a major accomplishment here.

The movies that ousted War Machine from the global Netflix leaderboards also make this accomplishment look more impressive, since it took films like Michael B. Jordan’s next movie after Sinners, a new animated movie from Illumination that builds on the studio’s success with the Despicable Me series, and Gladiator 2 all excelling platform among others for War Machine to fall out of favor – and if Swapped, Migration, Gladiator 2 or any other films hadn’t hit the charts, it’s possible War Machine could have remained in the leaderboards.

How War Machine Managed To Be In Netfix’s Weekly Top 10 For So Long

Alan Ritchson carrying a Ranger in War Machine. — Alan Ritchson carrying a ranger in War Machine.

War Machine enjoying an extended period in Netflix’s weekly top 10 most watched movies globally makes a lot of sense given several factors around the project. First and foremost, Alan Ritchson starring as the main character in the movie immediately helps add to the appeal of the project, since Ritchson’s popularity has blossomed anew thanks to his current lead role in Reacher, and history with action films.

This itself gives War Machine a natural intrigue for a considerable audience, which is helped by the fact that action movies tend to be one of the most consistently popular film genres for Netflix, in part because a core appeal of the streaming service is the opportunity it provides for viewers to sit back and relax with an action-packed release to entertain them.

Without giving too much away, the fact that War Machine contains a major twist a good portion of the way into its story is also sure to have helped the movie be recommended via word of mouth, since those going into the film expecting a by-the-book action flick about Ritchson’s hero completing the training needed to join the Army Rangers are in for an exciting surprise that adds something more to the story.

Overall, while War Machine‘s success on Netflix wasn’t written in the stars, it does have several clear hallmarks of a film that’s suited to being a streaming release, and that was geared up to have a notable amount of interest from those looking for a solid action movie. With Alan Ritchson‘s next action movies – Motor City and Runner – only being months away from their respective July and September releases, it’ll be interesting to see if they prove to be as popular as War Machine was previously.