WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – APRIL 01: Mel Gibson attends the photo call for Columbia Pictures’ … [+]
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Mel Gibson is proving that he can still attract the attention of movie audiences, even when the film he’s starring in is an obscure release from a couple of years ago.
According to Netflix’sNFLX -0.6% Global Top 10 Movies chart, Gibson’s twisty crime thriller On the Line earned the No. 7 spot for the week of March 25-31, with 3.8 million views, which equates to 6.6 hours viewed. The chart mistakenly indicated On The Line has been in the Global Top 10 for two weeks, but the film did not appear on the chart from March 18-24. The 2024 crime thriller Heart of the Hunter debuted atop the Global Top 10 Chart this week.
On The Line was also No. 2 on Netflix’s U.S. Top 10 Movies chart behind Ben Affleck’s 2016 crime drama The Accountant. On the Line debuted at No. 7 on the U.S. chart for the week of March 18-24.
What makes the performance of Gibson’s movie especially extraordinary is that On the Line was never released in the U.S. theaters when it debuted in 2022 and only played on screens in a handful of countries overseas. Fortunes changed last week for Gibson’s thriller, though, when the film began trending on Netflix.
On the Line stars Gibson as Elvis Cooney, a veteran shock jock working overnights in Los Angeles who is being urged by management to change his old ways. Listenership spikes, though, when a caller claiming to be a former employee of the station threatens to kill Elvis’ family unless the DJ cooperates with the demented caller’s demands — all while remaining on the air.
While On the Line is attracting a huge amount of attention on Netflix, it didn’t impress the critics who reviewed it. The film scored a dismal 20 percent “rotten” rating from 25 critics on review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, while more than 250 voters combined votes to date have the film sitting at a 30 percent positive audience score.
Lindsay Lohan as Maddie Kelly in a scene from “Irish Wish.”
