Fresh content typically rises in the charts when it arrives on Netflix and often it’s the kind of thing that surprises even the experts. Consider the latest movie to leap to #1 on Netflix, the Chris Hemsworth-starring thriller Blackhat, which arrived just yesterday on the streamer. Without any warning or build up, Blackhat jumped to the top position across all movies on the service, beating out recent Netflix originals like The Tinder Swindler, Tall Girl 2, and Bigbug. Hemsworth is among the most popular movie stars working today, thanks in large part to his time as Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but even this film being #1 has us saying “huh.”
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Why is this a little surprising? The film is among the bottom 5 and worst rated movies of Hemsworth’s career on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, and was an unmitigated bomb at the box office. Hemsworth stars as “blackhat” hacker Nicholas Hathaway, a convicted computer hacker brought in to assist with the capture of an even more dangerous hacker. As of this writing Blackhat has a 32% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes (and a 24% audience score). The film’s critical consensus reads: “Thematically timely but dramatically inert, Blackhat strands Chris Hemsworth in a muddled misfire from director Michael Mann.” The movie brought in just over $19 million worldwide on a reported budget of $70 million.
Even Hemsworth himself considers it a misfire in his career, telling Variety back in 2019: “I didn’t enjoy what I did in the film. It just felt flat, and it was also an attempt to do what I thought people might have wanted to see. But I don’t think I’m good in that space.”
Perhaps this hunger for Hemsworth on Netflix stems from the popularity of his original film Extraction on the service. Released in April of 2020 the action-thriller quickly became a major hit for the streamer and as of right now is the #4 most popular movie of all time on the service. Netflix measures this by hours streamed in the first 28 days of relase, putting Extraction at just over 231 million hours streamed. A sequel has already been ordered and is in production right now with Hemsworth returning. The Extraction films reunite Hemsworth with his Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo, plus stunt coordinator Sam Hargrave who made his directorial debut with the first film.
