Heart of Stone tops the Netflix charts as Hidden Strike fades

It looks like the obscure and long-shelved Jackie Chan/ John Cena vehicle Hidden Strike’s reign at the top of the Netflix charts is over, with Gal Gadot’s spy thriller Heart of Stone topping the global charts. Curiously, Hidden Strike, while still coming in at number 2 on the international charts, completely fell out of the top 10 on the U.S. chart, which seems strange considering how well it did last week (read our review of the underwhelming film here).

Gal Gadot’s mostly well-reviewed Heart of Stone raked in 33.1 Million views and 69.6 hours viewed. While promising, that puts the movie well behind a pair of Netflix’s most recent action flicks, Extraction 2, which raked in 88.4 hours viewed in its first week, and The Mother, which was watched for 83.7 hours. In fact, the latter film, which stars Jennifer Lopez, has turned into Netflix’s biggest hit of the year, currently sitting at number 7 on their all-time Most Popular Films chart. No other 2023 movie has managed to duplicate that feat, including the much-hyped Extraction 2.

Meanwhile, on the T.V. side, Peter Berg’s opioid limited series Painkiller has proven to be a hit, with it topping the charts despite its grim subject matter. Based on the Sackler family’s development of OxyContin, the series earned 7.2 million views. That’s pretty good for such a heavy show, and it looks like the Uzo Aduba, Taylor Kitsch, and Matthew Broderick-led series is a solid hit. Hopefully, its success will encourage Netflix to make more limited series like these. There’s plenty of room for fun and fantasy, but sometimes harder-hitting stuff should be on the menu too.

Sadly, it looks like Netflix’s They Cloned Tyrone never made much of a dent on the charts, with it falling out of the global and U.S. top 10 this week. Perhaps it was too off-kilter for the mainstream Netflix audience but good on them for taking a chance on riskier material.

Did you watch Heart of Stone or Painkiller this weekend? Let us know what you think in the comments!