From Box Office Flop To Streaming Sensation

After a quiet $2.1 million theatrical release, Sleeping Dogs has become a streaming hit. The 2024 crime thriller stars Russell Crowe in the lead role but, like many of his recent movies, made little noise at the box office, making just over $2 million.

Now, two years later, Sleeping Dogs ranks ninth in the Top 10 movies on Paramount+ in the United States for today, January 19, per FlixPatrol. It ranks above The Contractor in 10th and below Top Gun: Maverick, Fighting, Wander, Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, The Running Man (1987), Regretting You, Roofman, and The Running Man (2025) at No. 1.

Sleeping Dogs also ranks 10th in the Top 10 overall on Paramount+ in the United States for today, finishing below TV shows like Landman, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Girl Taken, Tulsa King, Mayor of Kingstown, Coldwater, and Harlan Coben’s Final Twist.

Sleeping Dogs is also streaming on Hulu.

Directed by Adam Cooper in his feature-length debut, who co-wrote the script with Bill Collage based on the 2017 novel The Book of Mirrors by E.O. Chirovici, Sleeping Dogs stars Russell Crowe as a former homicide detective suffering from amnesia who must investigate a savage killing, leading him to uncover dark truths buried in his lost past.

Other than Russell Crowe in the lead role, the cast also includes Karen Gillan (the MCU, Doctor Who), Marton Csokas, Tommy Flanagan, Harry Greenwood, Thomas M. Wright, Elizabeth Blackmore, Lynn Gilmartin, Pacharo Mzembe, Paula Arundell, and Jane Harber.

With a 43% Rotten Tomatoes score, Sleeping Dogs was shot down by critics for failing to provide Russell Crowe with a truly engaging mystery, ending up collapsing instead of truly distinguishing itself. However, the film fared much better with audiences, indicated by its 80% score from that group.

In ScreenRant‘s Sleeping Dogs review, Abigail Stevens called the movie a “meandering whodunit that wastes talented actors… Sleeping Dogs follows an ex-homicide detective with memory loss who is drawn out of retirement, but its poor writing maligns its interesting premise.”

Sleeping Dogs grossed only $2.1 million at the box office worldwide and though its budget is unknown, it’s been estimated at $32 million.

Though Russell Crowe was once one of the biggest stars of the early 2000s, winning an Academy Award for Gladiator, in recent years, he has been relegated to lower-profile films that make little impression with critics and at the box office, but tend to become hits on streaming, a relic of Russell Crowe‘s once formidable star power.