The Rip is further proof that Netflix subscribers love action thrillers

The Rip on Netflix, starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon

Share this Article:

Tense thriller The Rip has drawn 41.6m views in its first three days on Netflix, making it one of the platform’s biggest debuts ever. Glance through the top 10 most popular movies on Netflix, and you’ll see a pattern emerge: they’re all genre films. And while they vary in tone and subject, just about all ... The Rip is further proof that Netflix subscribers love action thrillers

Tense thriller The Rip has drawn 41.6m views in its first three days on Netflix, making it one of the platform’s biggest debuts ever.

Glance through the top 10 most popular movies on Netflix, and you’ll see a pattern emerge: they’re all genre films. And while they vary in tone and subject, just about all of them have a bit of action in the mix, whether it’s the animated phenomenon that is KPop Demon Hunters, the spluttering star vehicle Red Notice, or the dragon-slaying fantasy, Damsel.

Netflix subscribers, it seems, naturally gravitate towards action and thrillers in some combination or other – which brings us to director Joe Carnahan’s The Rip, which debuted last Friday (the 18th January). Perhaps bolstered by the starry presence of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the cop nail-biter has managed to notch up 41.6m views over its first three days – making it one of Netflix’s biggest debuts ever.

This also makes it Netflix’s biggest film success since Happy Gilmore 2, which had a debut of 46.7m viewers. In fact, looking at a list of the top 10 Netflix debuts published by World of Reel, and another theme becomes clear: movies that start strongly with Netflix subscribers tend to end up on the all-time most watched list.

Red Notice, Don’t Look Up, Carry-On and Leave The World Behind are all on the biggest Netflix debuts list, and all are on the platform’s top 10 most popular run-down:

KPop Demon Hunters (324.m views)
Red Notice (230.9m)
Carry-On (172.1)
Don’t Look Up (171.4)
The Adam Project (157.6)
Bird Box (157.4)
Back In Action (147.2)
Leave The World Behind (143.4)
The Gray Man (139.3)
Damsel (138m)

The glaring exceptions to that rule are Happy Gilmore 2, which started off strongly but evidently didn’t amass enough eyeballs to make the top 10. And on the flipside, KPop Demon Hunters, whose phenomenal popularity built over a course of weeks.

We don’t often drone on about box office numbers on Film Stories, but these Netflix charts are oddly fascinating, at least for this writer. Few of Netflix’s most-watched films are likely to be regarded as classics, but all are loaded with movement, colour and a smidgen of intrigue.

The platform’s subscribers, it seems, love movies with a bit of action in them, even if the rest of the production is less than memorable (does anyone recall much about The Gray Man other than Ryan Gosling’s facial hair?).

The Rip could well end up as one of Netflix’s most-watched films ever in the coming weeks, much like Carry-On and other thrillers before it. The streaming firm acquired The Rip a year or so back in a deal with its production company, Artists Equity, which is owned by Damon and Affleck, and from Netflix’s standpoint, it was a wise business decision.

And behind all the stats and numbers, there’s a mildly uplifting story at the end of this: as part of that deal, Artists Equity stipulated that if The Rip did well enough with viewers, then everyone involved, from the most senior producer to someone working on the lighting, would get a bonus. It’s quite likely that around 1,000 people who worked on that film will get a cheque through the post fairly soon.