Pictured: Russian Doll, Marmaduke, The Pentaverate
You often hear about the biggest Netflix shows and movies whether that be the likes of Bridgerton, Stranger Things, and Squid Game setting viewership records. You also hear about the critically acclaimed Netflix series and movies being touted by Netflix and the press, but flops often aren’t discussed in much detail. Here are our picks of the biggest Netflix flops of 2022 (so far).
How do we define a flop? Well, we’re going to do it in two ways primarily. These titles either had poor viewership or were critically panned (or even both).
Bigbug
Netflix has made some expensive big swings over the years often giving big budgets to proven names and earlier this year, we saw the highly anticipated title from Jean-Pierre Jeunet (best known for the cult classic Amélie) and the results were… mixed.
Viewership in the Netflix hourly top 10s wasn’t horrific clocking in 4.4 million hours viewed in week 1 and 8.1 million for week two before dropping out. It also featured in lots of top 10s but the long-term impact of the movie is what’s in question here.
Reviews are what really put this movie on this list with it having a poor 44% from critics with the consensus on RT being “Jeunet fans will find the whimsy they seek within BigBug, although it isn’t enough to make this mishmash more than intermittently engaging.”
Russian Doll
Russian Doll – Picture: Netflix
This is a controversial one. After all, Netflix is rightfully pitching the series to Emmy voters, and critics all fell in love again with the show but the problem with Russian Doll lies with viewership, or more to the point, lack of.
Netflix top 10s allow us to see what’s popular on the service and their new global top 10 published every Tuesday gives us hourly data. The issue with Russian Doll is that it didn’t feature in those top 10s. At all. Even with raw top 10 data the picture for the viewership on the show looks bleak. It only managed 3 days in the US TV top 10s before disappearing for good.
Was the show too slow returning to our screens? Was the audience for season 1 content with the story told and not gasping for more? You can be the judge there.
The Pentaverate
Ticking both boxes of being both critically panned and having low viewership, Mike Myers’s big return to screens is, sadly, a big flop.
The series saw Myers play lots of different characters in a comedy series that lasted for 6 episodes (a decision on its future has yet to be officially announced although it’s expected not to return).
Reporting from The Information put this title down to a so-called “Ted Tax” whereby some projects get greenlit despite many even within Netflix being skeptical of the potential success of the project.
Space Force (Season 2)
Space Force – Picture: Netflix
The big new show from Greg Daniels that saw him reteaming with Steve Carrell of The Office had a lot of hype going into the first season. While it certainly didn’t live up to many people’s expectations it clearly generated enough interest for Netflix to commission a second and more slimmed-down season 2.
Season 2 did garner far more positive reviews from critics than the first season (season 2 is sitting at 90% on RottenTomatoes vs 39% for season 1) but where it really fell down was the viewership. It only clocked in a measly 12 million hours in its first week before disappearing for good.
Of course, the biggest teller of Space Force being a flop this time around was the fact that it ultimately got canceled, meaning we won’t be returning for a third season.
Tall Girl 2
Like another movie sequel which we’ll include later on this list, Tall Girl 2 was a result of its unexpectedly good viewership overcoming the bad reviews from both critics and audiences.
Viewership in its first three weeks did surpass 50 million hours viewed globally but interest in the title, according to Google Trends, was roughly half of the first movie.
Add to that the second movie received poor reviews once again with it only clocking a 35 on Metacritic (out of 100) and a 4.7 on IMDb.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Texas Chainsaw Massacre – Picture: Netflix
Every iconic horror franchise has had its fair share of terrible movies, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre included, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still fun to watch. But the sequel to the 1974 horror classic, aptly given the same title as its predecessor is just a terribly made film which is why it was critically panned and therefore makes it into this flop list. While there are many movies in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, including a multitude of extremely poor sequels, prequels, and reboots, the 2022 edition of Texas Chainsaw Massacre takes the crown as the very worst film in the family.
Sally Hardesty is no Laurie Strode, and while Leatherface is just as an iconic horror villain as Michael Myers, Hardesty and Leatherface do not share the same bloodied history as Strode and Myers. By trying in vain to replicate one of the most iconic rivalries in horror history by forcing us to believe Hardesty is a shotgun-wielding badass hell-bent on revenge (and the sub-plot of the movie to boot) made an already flaccid movie dead on arrival.
365: This Day
As with many of the titles on this list, you could argue this one is pretty harsh. In this instance, you could argue “of course, the second movie wasn’t as big as the first given how strange the first movie’s rise to fame was” but given Netflix is on the hook for both this second and third movie (due to release in August 2022) we’re going to include it.
The first week’s numbers for 365 Days: This Day were impressive but things went quickly downhill from there. In both weeks 1 to 2 and weeks 2 to 3 the movie saw a 60% decline in viewing hours. All of which says to us the popularity of the first movie really was just down to the fact nobody had anything better to do.
Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood
It pains us to have to include this movie on the flops list as it’s certainly not because it’s a bad film but rather that it just made such a small impact on viewing figures than it should’ve. It’s the big new animated movie from Richard Linklater (known for Boyhood) and featured the voice of Jack Black and Zachary Levi telling the story of the Apollo mission and how one young boy witnessed and was changed by the historic event.
Sadly, audiences just didn’t turn up for the movie. At all. The show failed to get into the global top 10 in terms of viewership and perhaps even worse, failed to even enter the movie top 10s of any region around the world.
Marmaduke
Marmaduke – Picture: Netflix
Adapted from a classic cartoon, reading reviews for this animated movie makes me believe that watching this is akin to abuse. It sports one of the worst RottenTomatoes ratings of the year with a 0% and a 20% from audiences and over on IMDb it has one of the worst scores of the year with only a 3.9.
Despite all this, on the viewership front, Marmaduke actually didn’t do too badly with it clocking up 29.52 million hours watched in its first three weeks.
Want to see what has done well for Netflix or what has been critically acclaimed? You can find our list of the best new movies or best new series here.
Did we exclude any big Netflix flops of 2022? Let us know in the comments.