Rebel Ridge just broke an incredible Netflix record

Netflix has one of the biggest hits of the year on its hands, and it doesn’t rely on a massive Hollywood celebrity or an existing franchise.

We already knew action flick Rebel Ridge had done well, reaching number one on the Netflix movie chart globally, but the official Tudum figures show what scale of hit we’re dealing with.

It’s a pretty big one.

Rebel Ridge was watched for 68.2 million hours on its first three days on stream, the equivalent of 31.2 million full watches.

That’s the highest first week hours viewed figure for any Netflix movie bar Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, which has three years of history to back it up. It's the biggest debut for a non-franchise film, in other words.

Rebel Ridge even beat surprise Netflix titan Damsel, which debuted with a 64-million-hour week earlier this year, and went on to enter the all-timer English language movie chart at number 7.

Could Rebel Ridge turn into one of the most watched Netflix movies ever? We’ll have our eyes on its second-week figures, because for one of these Netflix original movies to really have legs, it needs word of mouth appeal and a good stint in the streamer’s most-watched list.

Some of the components are already here, though. Rebel Ridge is an action-heavy thriller, not the sort of film that might put you off with its sheer weightiness on a Friday night. It has also received largely great reviews, landing on a 94% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score.

What’s the story about? Rebel Ridge stars Aaron Pierre as Terry Richmond, a man who tries to bail out his cousin from jail in small-town America.

His bail money is seized by corrupt cops, but as an ex-Marine, he’s not going to let his one go. And things escalate.

It’s thoroughly worth a watch, and keeps up its momentum despite a fairly hefty 2 hour 11 minute runtime.

If Rebel Ridge does slide into the all-timer English language movie top 10 for Netflix, it will be one of the cheapest movies to do so. Director Jeremy Saulnier has suggested it was made for $40 million. Bird Box still takes the cake on this one, though, sitting at number 4 with reported production budget of $19.8 million.

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