There’ve been a lot of celebratory statements being released by the major studios and streaming services over the last few months touting the success that some of their biggest movies have enjoyed after being added to their respective platforms, but there’s been one title that’s quietly built up a reputation as a massive hit of the COVID-19 era.
Wonder Woman 1984, Pixar’s Soul, Amazon’s Coming 2 America and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, along with Zack Snyder’s Justice League, have all drawn in big numbers and been praised by the boardrooms at each company with the notable exception of the latter. However, Gerard Butler‘s disaster thriller Greenland has to be viewed as one of the most successful films of the last fifteen or so months since the Coronavirus first took hold.
Not only did it hit theaters last July when large parts of the world were in full lockdown and manage to turn a profit after earning over $52 million on a $35 million budget, but it’s been an absolute monster since being made available on VOD in December, before getting added to the Prime Video library and remaining in the upper echelons of the Top 10 most-watched list for weeks.
Greenland is back again today, this time as one of Hulu’s most popular movies, where at the time of writing it’s sitting in third place on the viewership charts. Once the numbers were crunched, distributor STX Films revealed that Gerard Butler‘s latest mid-budget thriller had brought in $32 million in VOD sales before it was even free to stream on various platforms, which makes it one of the most lucrative movies to have been released since March of last year, having yielded a net profit of somewhere between $60 million and $80 million.