A DC Film is Dominating Netflix’s Top 10

There’s a comic book movie topping Netflix‘s charts today. It stars Chris Evans and Zoe Saldana, and if you’ve read this far, you probably already know that the punchline here is that rather than Avengers: Endgame, we’re talking about The Losers. Based loosely on a Vertigo update of an old DC Comics property, The Losers centered on an elite U.S. Special Forces unit sent into the Bolivian jungle on a “search and destroy” mission, who find themselves the target of a lethal betrayal and make plans to even the score. The movie, released in 2010, also stars Idris Elba (Thor: Ragnarok), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Walking Dead), Jason Patric (Powers), and was directed by Sylvain White.

White has a nice resume, with some geek-friendly pit-stops, himself. The filmmaker helmed the Slender Man movie, but has really found a niche for himself in TV, where he has directed episodes of The Rookie, The Americans, and The Umbrella Academy.

The Losers‘s irreverent sensibilties and rock-solid cast have earned it a spot alongside movies like Constantine and Josie and the Pussycats in conversations about the most underappreciated comic book adaptations. It may, in fact, have been just slightly ahead of the curve, considering that the comic story it drew the most inspiration from was by artist Jock and writer Andy Diggle. Within just a few years, Jock’s work would become synonymous with the cult comic book hit Dredd, while Green Arrow: Year One by the pair would inspire Arrow.

Today, The Losers is trending as the #3 movie on Netflix in the United States. Worldwide, it’s doing even better, topping the charts outright. That’s what you get for creating something that has Idris Elba in a team of ragtag antiheroes, right?

The movie earned mixed reviews and earned only slightly more than its reported budget, meaning that it was treated as a disappointment for Warner Bros. It found its audience on home video, but as a 2010 release, the days of huge DVD rental revenues were gone, and streaming had not yet proven itself to be a huge source of cashflow, so it seems to be viewed as a cult hit, at best.

If you want to check this movie and, and haven’t seen it — or maybe haven’t seen it in ten years — it’s worth a go. Given that DC movies tend to come and go from Netflix pretty quick,you might want to do it sooner rather than later.