Netflix’s Most Expensive Movie Ever Quickly Lost The #1 Spot To This Low-Budget Romance

6 Underground. The Irishman. Triple Frontier. Bright. Army of the Dead. NetflixNFLX
has had a history of funneling tens of millions of dollars into its filmic projects in the hopes of competing with theatrical releases from Hollywood’s biggest film studios. But none of those movies had the budget of Netflix’s latest blockbuster: The Gray Man.

It’s a wonder, then, that the $200 million venture has already lost the #1 spot on Netflix’s Top 10 list to a pretty low-key romance. Yesterday, Purple Hearts took over the top position on Netflix’s daily popularity charts, dethroning The Gray Man from an eight-day run. And today the streak continued for Purple Hearts.

Purple Hearts stars Sofia Carson and Nicholas Galitzine as an unlikely pair—an aspiring singer-songwriter and a soldier—who decide to get married for the military benefits. It isn’t long, however, before real feelings start to surface.

There’s no word on how high the budget was for Purple Hearts—but we can be sure it’s nowhere near The Gray Man’s. In fact, it seems quite low budget, as it doesn’t have near the star power of The Gray Man (which stars Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, and Ana de Armas (and was directed by the Russo brothers, who directed the highest-earning movie of all time, Avengers: Endgame)).

All of this begs the question: When does such a monumental price tag become too much for a Netflix film? How bad is it when The Gray Man can’t hold onto the top spot on Netflix’s own charts for more than eight days? The best way to answer that last question is to look at the history of Netflix’s Top 10 rankings.

Only one other movie in Netflix’s history costed $200 million to make: the Gal Gadot/Dwayne Johnson/Ryan Reynolds vehicle Red Notice. But unlike The Gray Man, Red Notice was able to hold onto the top spot for 12 straight days. That ranks amongst the best streaks ever, with the likes of Hubie Halloween (14 days), The Unforgivable (14 days), and Project Power (13 days).

On top of that, Red Notice spent a total of 62 consecutive days on the Top 10 charts. That’s a streak rivaled by very few movies, with films like We Can Be Heroes, The Mitchells vs. The Machines, and Vivo coming near that number. In fact, Red Notice continues to post incredible numbers to this days in several other countries. Today alone, Red Notice appeared on the Top 10 list in Germany, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, and Ukraine.

So while The Gray Man has plenty of time to match Red Notice’s numbers, it’s certainly not off to as hot of a start. And that’s the same case when comparing The Gray Man with The Mitchells vs. The Machines—a film that costed $110 million to make and spent 14 consecutive days in the #1 position (easily one of the best streaks ever).

On the other hand, however, several of Netflix’s biggest-budgeted films have failed to chart highly on the Top 10. The Midnight Sky, for instance, costed $100 million, but only spent five days in the #1 spot. In total, that film only saw the Top 10 charts for 13 days. There’s also Army of the Dead, which captured first place for six days and only spent 29 days on the Top 10.

Like I said earlier, there’s plenty of time for The Gray Man to make up for lost ground. At the very least, today’s Top 10 list shows the potential for Netflix’s low-budget ventures to perform well. But we can’t help but question how valuable the high-budget films become when things like this happen.