Turns out Henry Cavill’s new Guy Ritchie action thriller is a global streaming juggernaut
The action thriller has just cemented its status as a global smash — and the clinching detail is the bit you’ll want to know.
So, Henry Cavill teams up (again) with Guy Ritchie for In the Grey, a film that clearly had all the right pieces on paper—mega-watt cast, explosions galore, cunning heists, you get the drift. Still, its journey from cinema to streaming turned out to be more dramatic than anything happening on screen.
Box Office Carnage
If there was ever a film that proved star power isn’t everything, it’s this one. Released in cinemas back in May, In the Grey managed to bring together Cavill, Jake Gyllenhaal (also turning up from Ritchie’s The Covenant), and Eiza Gonzalez (another familiar face from The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare). The plot? A crack team of fixers, both deadly and suave, are roped into retrieving a $1 billion debt swiped by a villain who doesn’t do half-measures. Naturally, their rescue attempt quickly snowballs into a carnage-fuelled free-for-all bursting with betrayals, banter, and bullets.
Despite this cocktail of testosterone and talent, the film absolutely flopped at the box office—grossing just $23.7 million on a rather eye-watering production budget rumoured to be about $70 million. Not pretty, that. Critics piled on, with Rotten Tomatoes settling on a not-exactly-bragworthy 52%, but, somewhat surprisingly, general audiences came away much happier. The film bagged a much rosier 83% on the Popcornmeter, which frankly sounds like the world’s most optimistic metric but nonetheless speaks to a divide between snarky reviewers and actual viewers.
In the Grey opened in May and earned just $23.7 million worldwide, despite costing $70 million to make.
Streaming Salvation
Here’s where things get a bit more cheerful for team Cavill. Turns out, In the Grey wasn’t dead on arrival after all. Since hitting Prime Video, it’s stormed straight into the global top 10, sidling up with the likes of Gyllenhaal’s Road House revival, Statham’s latest brawler Shelter, space epic Project Hail Mary, and a frankly unexpected Masters of the Universe reboot. Whatever proper film critics think, people sat on their sofas seem quite keen on unrelenting mayhem with some quips thrown in.
- 01. Masters of the Universe
- 02. Project Hail Mary
- 03. Shelter
- 04. The Devil's Mouth
- 05. In the Grey
- 06. Hokum
- 07. Sidelined 2: Intercepted
- 08. Road House
- 09. The Long Walk
- 10. Normal
So, for all its misfortune under the cinema lights, In the Grey has gone and found a massive audience online, which bodes rather nicely for Cavill’s next few attempts at franchise dominance—including a live-action Voltron (finally) and his much-hyped Warhammer 40,000 project. As if that weren’t enough, he’s also due up in the new Highlander reboot, under Chad Stahelski (he of John Wick fame). Could be third time lucky for him—though if I were Ritchie, I’d probably just stick to VOD for the next one.