Was 'Hit Man' a Hit (, Man)?
The thorny question of finding success on Netflix.
Last Friday, Netflix released Richard Linklater’s new movie Hit Man on their service after giving it a brief two-week theatrical run. As of Tuesday, Hit Man was currently the #1 Movie on Netflix ahead of Wonder, a 2017 movie starring Jacob Tremblay. Is Hit Man well ahead of Wonder? Is Wonder, despite no promotion, close to knocking Hit Man off the top slot? We don’t know because while Netflix has become a little more liberal with releasing numbers, that liberality is the distance from “no information beyond when we choose to say something is a hit,” and “biannual reports.”
While I’m not a fan of using box office as if movies were athletes performing feats of strength, box office does get people talking. If a film has a huge weekend at the box office, it can convey to audiences that this is something people are talking about. Even with a massive drop-off after opening weekend, a film can still pull people in by owning the Sunday news cycle. There’s certainly the risk of a public flop, but there’s also the reward of public success. When you make a big deal about a movie being a success, it sells the movie more. Since Netflix doesn’t have anything in the way of post-release strategies beyond virality (e.g. no home video, no run on cable, etc.) then all they have is that Top 10 list, which isn’t nothing, but it also doesn’t really make much of a push since a film like Wonder, which Netflix didn’t make and was released seven years ago, could easily climb the charts.
This is part of a bigger problem for Netflix because while they have no problem pushing quantity, you also create a big content slush pile where movies are easily lost. While traditional movie studios are also playing the opening weekend game, they still have some backstops if a movie doesn’t break out big. Furiosa and The Fall Guy may not have performed to where their studios wanted, but they also get more opportunities to build an audience. I don’t know what happens to Hit Man a month from now. For Netflix, their argument will be, “You can watch it anytime! No rush!” But scarcity is also a driver of interest. Once Hit Man becomes just another title swimming in Netflix’s massive content pool, how much interest does it draw? Or, to return to our original question, was “a hit” before it became just another Netflix movie?
I’m not blaming filmmakers who feel like they have to jump into bed with Netflix. As Linklater explains, after the film’s successful showing at TIFF, studios still didn’t bite because they don’t know what to do with a movie like this. But from the showings of The Fall Guy and Furiosa, they don’t know what to do with traditional blockbusters either. They seem completely at a loss with their own movies, and while no one has ever known what would be a hit, studios are now cannibalizing their movies by incentivizing audiences to get films to a streaming service and away from pricey, poorly run theaters.
So perhaps the question isn’t even “Is Hit Man a hit on Netflix?” but “Is there any way a fun, breezy, engaging movie like Hit Man could be a hit at all?” While it would be nice to ignore the numbers entirely and just embrace art as art, we’re also looking at a business that makes decisions based on the performance of other movies. When The Avengers was a hit, other studios rushed to try and make their own cinematic universes. When Lord of the Rings was a hit, studios chased after fantasy adaptations. The business side matters in terms of what kind of art gets made in the first place, and yet if streaming constricts everything, then what does that mean for the next Hit Man?
Twenty years ago, a film like Hit Man could have been a word-of-mouth hit like Napoleon Dynamite or My Big Fat Greek Wedding—smaller, crowd-pleasing movies that relished quirky characters. Today, it’s competing with far more entertainment options, but that doesn’t make Hit Man a worse movie. Instead, like so many Netflix debuts, there’s a “take it or leave it” approach, where the question isn’t, “Was this movie a hit?” but “Would it even matter if it was?”
[Nothing else this week since I’m still plugging away at the same books and television; I was going to see Inside Out 2 last night, but our dog Jack wasn’t feeling well, so I stayed home to help take care of him. If you upgrade to a paid subscription, you will keep Jack feeling happy and well-supplied with snausages. I am not above putting an adorable photo of my dog here to encourage you to upgrade.]
I hope Jack gets better soon!