Though he has a romantic comedy side as well,Gerard Butler’s career has been defined by action movies.He has been making installments in the genre for almost as long as he has been a working actor, making his action film debut in 1997 with a supporting role in the James Bond movieTomorrow Never Dies. From there, Butler’s other early work in the genre includedTale of the MummyandFast Food. More recently, Butler acted in theaction sequelDen of Thieves 2: Pantera. While the movie’s box office performance was mixed, it has done well on streaming.
In addition to his more traditional installments,Gerard Butler action movieshave recently begun to embrace a new subgenre: the disaster thriller. In 2020, he led the cast ofGreenland, a Ric Roman Waugh-directed movie about a family struggling to survive after a natural disaster. In addition to Butler, the movie also starred Morena Baccarin, Roger Dale Floyd, Scott Glenn, and Randal Gonzalez. Though it had a modest gross due to its pandemic release,Greenlandwas popular enough to be awarded a sequel, which is currently in development. Now, another one of Butler’s disaster films is trending on streaming.
Geostorm Has Hit The Streaming Charts
The Movie Did Not Get Good Reviews
Geostormhas now made it into the Netflix global Top 10. Coming out three years beforeGreenland, this sci-fi-inflecteddisaster movieimagines a story wherein satellites designed to protect the Earth’s climate instead start attacking the planet, wreaking worldwide chaos. In the movie, Butler’s character Jake Lawson and his collaborators must race against time to stop it before the world is destroyed.Geostormgot pretty terrible reviews, managing just an 18% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. It was also a commercial flop, grossing $221.6 million against its roughly $120 million budget and losing Warner Bros. $71.6 million.
The star-studded cast ofGeostormalso included Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Andy García, Abbie Cornish, Daniel Wu, and Eugenio Derbez.
Eight years after its initial disappointing release,Geostormhas now become a streaming success. As perNetflix,the film made it to No. 4 onto the streamer’s global chart of the Top 10 English-language moviesfor the week of March 31 through April 6, amassing 4.9 million views totaling 8.9 million viewing hours. In addition toGeostorm, the global top 10 includedThe Life List,One of Them Days,Alpha,Sniper: Rogue Mission,The Core,Kraven the Hunter,Con Mum,The Electric State, andRobinson Crusoe.
The biggest boost to this total was the United States, which is the only country in which the movie landed in the Top 10 for the week.
What This Means For Geostorm
Gerard Butler Likely Helped It Succeed
A big reason forGeostorm’s reinvigorated popularity is most likely the heightened interest in Butler that has taken place since the movie’s original debut. When it hit theaters in 2017,it came toward the tail end of a devastating 11-film run of Rotten Tomatoes splatsfor his live-action movies. It earned his ninth splat in a row, coming after a string of failures including 2012’sPlaying for Keeps(6%) and 2016’sGods of Egypt(14%) andLondon Has Fallen(28%). It was then followed byHunter Killer(38%) and theoriginalDen of Thieves(41%) in 2018.
The only Gerard Butler movie released between 2012 and 2018 that earned a Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score was the 2014 animated featureHow to Train Your Dragon 2(92%).
While he has had his share of Rotten Tomatoes splats in recent years, including 2022’sLast Seen Alive(14%) and 2023’sKandahar(45%),Gerard Butler’s career has been on a general upswing since the release ofGeostorm. While theDen of Thieves 2: Panterareleasehas reignited interest in the actor, an awareness that has only increased since the movie hit streaming, his movies have already been on the rise throughout the 2020s, with theGreenlandpremiere kicking off a run of better-received titles including 2021’sCopshop(83%) and the 2023 box office hitPlane(79%).
Our Take On Geostorm’s Streaming Success
It Could Be A Portent Of Things To Come
Another potential proof of Gerard Butler’s rising star being the major reason for the Netflix success ofGeostormis the fact thatthe disaster movie still has a dismal audience score on the Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter. While viewers gave it a slightly more positive score than critics did, landing at 35%, this hardly reflects the possibility that the movie itself is becoming a streaming hit on its own merits. Ultimately, this could compound with the critical and commercial success of some of his recent movies to pave the way for even more hits for the star in the coming years.
Gerard Butler’s New Action Movie Is Just The Start To What Should Be An Incredible 2025 For Him
Gerard Butler has an early box office success with Den of Thieves 2, and it is just the start to what should be an incredible 2025 for him.
The upcoming projects to whichGerard Butleris attached already seem poised to keep his career on the rise. This particularly includes thelive-actionHow to Train Your Dragon, the remake of the popular animated movie that launched the franchise that has most helped to propel the star’s critical and commercial success. However,he has other potential successes in developmentfollowing the streaming success ofGeostorm, including the sequelsGreenland: MigrationandDen of Thieves 3.
Geostorm
Cast
Geostorm is a sci-fi thriller starring Gerard Butler as satellite designer Jake Lawson who discovers a problem with an international satellite system developed to counter climate change. When the satellites malfunction, causing a dangerous and gigantic storm that threatens to obliterate the planet, Jake and a group of other officials must race to solve the problem before the storm swallows them whole.
