5 Box-Office Flops That Became Streaming Hits

As any cult film fan knows, a movie’s box office receipts don’t measure its worth, but rather how well it was perceived by audiences when it debuted. A movie’s theatrical success or failure can be damaged by anything from a bad marketing campaign to being ahead of its time to current events. However, not all of them find their audience after the fact.

Not only are these five titles among the lucky number that rebounded, but they were also streaming hits to an astounding degree. Let’s break it all down.

1. The Suicide Squad (2021)

James Gunn’s DC Extended Universe superhero movie The Suicide Squad (which was, confusingly, a sequel to 2016’s Suicide Squad) can’t really be blamed for its underperformance at the box office. It came out during a time when the box office was deeply compromised by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to that, over the course of the whole year, Warner Bros. titles were released day-and-date on streaming on HBO Max, which cut into their theatrical profits considerably.

Regardless, it only made $167.8 million at the box office against its budget of $185 million. While it nearly made its budget back, that wasn’t anywhere close to enough for it to be considered a success. Because theaters keep half of ticket sales and marketing costs aren’t factored into production budgets, blockbuster movies need to earn back two and a half times their budgets in order to end up in the black. All in all, by the time the DCEU was rebooted as the DCU in 2025, The Suicide Squad had settled into a place as the third lowest-grossing installment in the franchise (behind only Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Blue Beetle).

However, Whip Media later reported that The Suicide Squad was the seventh most-watched movie on streaming in 2021 and the most-watched bar none for HBO Max. That’s not too shabby for a movie that was No. 25 at the global box office that year.

2. Onward (2020)

Pixar’s Onward is another movie that was heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It debuted on March 6, 2020, mere weeks before theaters shut down worldwide. Largely because of that, it only grossed $141.9 million against its huge budget of $200 million.

However, it blasted past that number on streaming. Perhaps boosted by the fact that audiences across the world were stuck at home for months, it was streamed for 8.4 billion minutes in 2020 (per Nielsen), which amounts to 82.3 million start-to-finish views of the 102-minute movie. If we can assume that the average movie ticket costs roughly $15 (and, unfortunately, we can), that would have translated to a box office gross of $1.2 billion.

3. Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)

Even though Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon earned pretty spectacular reviews (on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s Certified Fresh with critics at 93% and Verified Hot with audiences at 97%), it was no match for a pandemic-depressed box office marketplace. The movie grossed just $130.4 million against a budget of roughly $100 million. Ultimately, it was only the 37th highest-grossing movie of the year worldwide, behind titles including Halloween Kills ($131.6 million), The Boss Baby: Family Business ($146.7 million), Space Jam: A New Legacy ($163.7 million), and The Suicide Squad.

However, the tune of the movie’s performance changed when it arrived on streaming. By the end of 2021, it landed at No. 3 on the chart of the most-streamed movies of the year (per Nielsen), behind only Moana (a mainstay on the end-of-year streaming chart) and Pixar’s new release Luca. Raya managed to surpass all manner of 2021 movies that outgrossed it in theaters, including Cruella (No. 8 on streaming), Jungle Cruise ($220. 9 million), and Marvel’s Black Widow ($379.7 million).

4. Kraven the Hunter (2024)

Another notable superhero flop is 2024’s Kraven the Hunter, the movie that put the nail in the coffin of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, a Marvel franchise that famously doesn’t feature Spider-Man. Although the Venom trilogy was successful, Kraven was the third in a string of unsuccessful spinoffs after Morbius (which flopped in theaters, got re-released after it went viral, and flopped again) and Madame Web (which also went viral thanks to its unhinged media campaign, but grossed just a hair more than $100 million).

The movie, which starred Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Kraven opposite a star-studded cast that included Ariana DeBose, Christopher Abbott, Alessandro Nivola, Fred Hechinger, and Russell Crowe, couldn’t even hit the heights of Madame Web. It ultimately grossed $62 million against a budget of at least $110 million, concluding the franchise with a whimper rather than a… slightly louder whimper.

However, once it landed on Netflix, Kraven’s healing potion kicked in. According to Nielsen, the movie was streamed for a whopping 3.7 billion minutes in 2025. Let’s crunch the numbers, shall we? Again, using that estimated average ticket price of $15, the 127-minute movie was watched for about 525 million minutes in theaters, which is less than one-sixth of the time that was spent watching it on streaming. If it made $15 on streaming for every 127 minutes viewed, it would have earned $437 million. That isn’t stop-the-presses money, sure, but it definitely would have been enough for Kraven to have broken even.

5. Red One (2024)

One of the most notable flops in recent memory is the holiday action-comedy Red One. The movie, which co-starred Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans, was an intended franchise-starter about a naughty hacker (Evans) who is hired by the incredibly named Callum Drift (Johnson), the head of Santa Claus’ (J.K. Simmons) security detail, when the man in red gets kidnapped.

The movie did alright at the box office, but it was beset by the same problem that has plagued recent Dwayne Johnson movies like Black Adam: its budget was enormous. It cost something between $200 and $250 million, which probably placed its break-even point somewhere between $500 and $625 million. It only made $186 million.

However, Amazon MGM Studios wasn’t breaking a sweat, as the movie was always designed to be a streaming draw. Hopefully one that became a seasonal rewatch every time Christmastime rolled around. Time will tell if it earns that status, but at the end of 2024, it had already amassed 5.57 billion minutes (again, per Nielsen). Once again using that $15 ticket metric, it would have only earned about 1.5 billion minutes in theaters (it’s a pretty long movie: 123 minutes). Given those streaming numbers, it would have made about $680 million in ticket sales, which is considerably better than Kraven and would similarly push it into the black.

So, have you seen any of the movies on this list? Did you catch them in theaters or on streaming, and do you think they deserve their streaming redemption? Sound off in the comments below!