Netflix's New Action Movie Dominates Every Other Streamer in Debut

12/02/2021 08:23 pm EST

It looks like we're in the midst of a western renaissance on Netflix. The Harder They Fall, a film from Jeymes Samuel starring Jonathan Majors and Idris Elba, was released on Netflix last month to rave reviews and some serious awards buzz. It was apparently every bit the hit with viewers that it was with critics. For the first week of November, The Harder They Fall didn't just top other movies on Netflix, it dominated the films on every other streaming service as well.

Nielsen recently revealed the streaming ratings for the week of November 1st through November 7th, and The Harder They Fall was the most-watched film in that span by a pretty wide margin. The Harder They Fall delivered nearly 1.2 billion streaming minutes over the course of that week. The second-highest film on the list was Netflix's Army of Thieves, which was streamed for just 456 million minutes. The popular western more than doubled the production of its nearest competition.

Netflix had multiple films on the list for the first week of November, with Love Hard, Replicas, American Gangster, and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword also landing in the top 10. Disney+ saw Coco, Black Widow, and Luca make splashes, while Apple TV+ found big success with its new Tom Hanks movie, Finch.

The Harder They Fall tells the story of outlaw Nat Love, who seeks revenge on the man who murdered his parents, dangerous criminal Rufus Buck. Ahead of the film's debut on Netflix, ComicBook.com caught up with director Jeymes Samuel to discuss the unique vision he brought to the western genre.

"I love westerns, I don't get them enough, so I really wanted to tell a story where I can use the camera to do stuff that they couldn't do when John Ford was making westerns, that they couldn't do when John Huston was operating and alive," the director continued. "I really wanted to utilize drones and show a train robbery. I love bank robberies, train robberies, jailbreaks, but I wanted to show a jailbreak and the train robbery in the same scene, and tell that story utilizing split screen. I wanted to do all these things with my debut feature film and that's what I got to do."

Have you checked out The Harder They Fall on Netflix? What did you think? Let us know in the comments!

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