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Ever since 2014's Godzilla, Gareth Edwards has proved he's the guy studios call when they need to inject new life into an old franchise. He brought Star Wars back to the big screen with Rogue One, and most recently he soft-rebooted the Jurassic franchise with Jurassic World Rebirth. But when it comes to his original, non-IP work, audiences have never really shown up in the same numbers.
The film in question came out in 2023 to a muted box office, which is a shame given the scale of what Edwards was attempting. It's set in a future where an AI designed to protect humanity detonates a nuclear warhead over Los Angeles, and this leads to a full-scale war between the humans and the machines. John David Washington stars as an ex-special forces operative sent to hunt down a mysterious war-ending weapon created by AI, only to discover that the weapon is actually a compassionate AI child.
The film is called The Creator, which just arrived on Netflix in most international markets this week. And the response has been immediate. According to FlixPatrol, the sci-fi epic has already broken into Netflix's Top 10 charts in 45+ countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. It is currently absent from Netflix's U.S. charts because it is not available to stream on the platform in America. The Creator was previously added to the U.S. Netflix library in March, but its run on the service ended about a month ago when it was removed from the catalog, which likely means that it didn't do quite as well in the U.S.
‘The Creator’ Proved a Sci-Fi Epic Doesn't Need a $200 Million Budget to Look Incredible
Part of what makes The Creator's belated streaming success so satisfying is what the film pulled off on a comparatively modest budget. Edwards had made the movie for somewhere between $80-$86 million. That’s less than half of what a film of this scale would normally cost. There are giant explosions, flying warships, huge armies of droids that wouldn't look out of place in a Star Wars movie or even Cyberpunk 2077, and the little AI child has a visible hole in the back of her head in nearly every scene. But none of it looks cheap or uncanny for even a second. For comparison, The Flash came out the same year with a $200 million budget, and it looked like a literal PS3 video game.
The Creator pulled in just $104 million worldwide and was considered a flop, and it's genuinely hard to pin down why it struggled the way it did. Perhaps it was the generic-looking plot that seemed derivative of other AI-versus-humanity movies like Terminator and The Matrix, and being an original film without built-in IP recognition likely didn't help it find an audience. But the visual effects work never went unrecognized. Almost every other review praised The Creator’s CGI, and the film also ended up winning Oscars for Best Visual Effects along with Best Sound.
The Creator is available to stream on Hulu. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
