Russell Crowe's New Netflix Hit Unabomber Loses Domestic Streaming Crown

Just under two weeks into its run, Netflix's new psychological drama film, Unabomber, has been replaced at the top of the streamer's domestic viewership charts. It does, however, continue to retain the crown globally. Unabomber opened to poor reviews on September 25, but accumulated more than 16 million views globally in its first week of release. This number will likely increase to more than 30 million when Netflix shares a fresh viewership update this week. Unabomber stars former child actor Jacob Tremblay as the infamous Ted Kaczynski, and Russell Crowe as the Harvard professor who conducted scientific experiments on him while he was a student.

Directed by Janus Metz, who has helmed episodes of the acclaimed series Andor and True Detective, the film unfolds across two timelines. The first follows Kaczynski as a troubled college student, and the second traces the manhunt that the FBI conducted for him across decades. Shailene Woodley appears as the FBI agent assigned to his case, while Annabelle Wallis appears as a colleague of the Harvard professor. Unabomber is now sitting at a 26% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, signaling broad disappointment from critics.

Here's the Movie That Unseated 'Unabomber' From Netflix's Number-One Spot

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That said, according to FlixPatrol, it remains the number-one movie globally on Netflix. However, Unabomber has now dropped to the fourth spot on the streamer's domestic chart, which is currently topped by Tyler Perry's Doing Life. Crowe recently starred in another two-hander, the Western drama The Weight. Released in theaters, it emerged as the Oscar-winner's top-reviewed film in nearly three decades and grossed around $3.5 million. In recent months, Crowe has seen several past movies find their audience on the PVOD market and streaming. His biggest hit of the last few months is probably the World War II drama Nuremberg, which became a major digital hit following a successful theatrical run. More recently, Crowe's crime thriller film The Get Out took the number-one spot on the domestic Prime Video chart.