In very rare instances, a bout of controversy can do a movie the world of good, piquing the curiosity of audiences that otherwise wouldn’t have given the project in question a second thought.
Now, you wouldn’t expect a VOD crime caper starring Pierce Brosnan as a world-renowned thief to find itself caught up in a wave of backlash, especially when the film itself was indisputably terrible, but The Misfits nonetheless managed to cause a firestorm of unwanted publicity.
Negative references to Qatar were not taken well by the local government, nor were direct quotes from the screenplay naming the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorists. The Misfits was co-financed by an Emirati company, and the nation has been accused of running an anti-Qatari bias in the media for years, which ultimately saw the project shelved and subjected to widespread criticism across many Middle Eastern and Asian nations.
All that for a frothy turd that landed a 19% score on Rotten Tomatoes, but has since rebounded on streaming. As per FlixPatrol, the tale of an elaborate and daring gold heist staged by a group of modern-day Robin Hoods underneath a prison has exploded into life on Amazon, where it’s managed to crack the platform’s Top 20 most-watched list.