Picture: Netflix
One of the big Netflix comedies of 2023 was Old Dads starring Bill Burr, Bobby Cannavale, and Bokeem Woodbine. During a recent podcast, Bill Burr provided an update on how the movie did following its release globally on October 20th.
The movie spent three weeks in the global Netflix top 10s in total, charting as the number 1 English-language movie for two weeks on the trot. It picked up 60 million hours watched in those three weeks. The movie was also heavily divided among movie critics and audiences. Critics weren’t big fans, with it only having a 25% on RT, while audiences found it far more watchable, with it having an 85% score on RT.
Burr spoke about his experience with the movie on his podcast, Monday Morning Podcast, while answering a question from a listener who had gambled his life savings away on the stock market.
While talking about his own life’s ups and downs, Burr spoke about some of his career highlights and lowlights, including two movies he’s been involved with recently: The King of Staten Island and, of course, Old Dads.
“I still have like setbacks, you know. I got a really good role in this movie [The King of Staten Island] and I was thinking like, oh man, this is going to be a great thing. I’ll get to do the talk show circuit, you know, maybe I’ll get some good press.
I can start getting some better acting roles. And then the pandemic comes and the movie comes out during the pandemic, does really well, but, you know, didn’t get to do the hype.
I do old dads. I’m all excited about it. I’m really blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it fucking comes out during the strike.
And it was this massive fucking hit that no one really talked about because it did that. And it’s just, you know, those are like little gut punches. I mean, the amount of time that me and Ben Tishel put in that fucking movie, it was like a, it was like four years of our lives and it just kind of, you know, came out and very quietly crushed.
I mean, it did amazing and it’s definitely opened some doors, but, you know, I didn’t get to do like what everyone was telling me. Oh my God, when this thing comes out, we’re going to get you on this show. You’re going to be on the cover of this magazine.
Nothing, none of that happened.”
You can hear the full rundown of what Burr had to say from around 7 minutes and 9 seconds in the following YouTube clip:
The marketing run-up to Old Dads was a little shorter than most on Netflix, but not significantly. The movie wasn’t originally bound for Netflix, as you may know, with it only being announced to have been acquired by the streamer in August 2023.
Beyond that initial announcement, Netflix sent two waves of press releases to outlets like ours on September 20th and October 16th and also included it in their Fall 2023 preview. Burr did some interviews for the movie (notably on Conan and Rich Eisen), but because of the SAG-AFTRA strike (which concluded in late November), it wasn’t able to get a full press rollout. It was one of many titles that were impacted by strikes beyond being delayed.
Did you enjoy Old Dads on Netflix? Let us know in the comments.