Just because the emotional farewell episode of Ted Lasso’s third and final season has now come and gone, that doesn’t mean fans of Jason Sudeikis’ irrepressibly optimistic coaching style and the fictional AFC Richmond football club are necessarily ready to let go of it all just yet. In fact, I have a theory: There’s so much residual affection for what Sudeikis brought to the role of Ted Lasso, which became far away the biggest Apple TV+ hit of them all, that as soon as Netflix over the weekend debuted an old, critically panned Sudeikis movie from back in 2013 (We’re the Millers, a crime comedy in which Sudeikis plays a pot dealer), many Netflix subscribers probably decided to check it out on the strength of his presence alone.
It’s too coincidental to me that in tandem with the series finale of Ted Lasso, Netflix subscribers collectively sent a newly debuted and kind of forgettable Sudeikis movie all the way to #1 on the streaming giant. Then again, older movies that Netflix subscribers may have missed in theaters when they first hit the big screen quite often do surprisingly well on the streamer, so that also plays a role in titles like We’re the Millers enjoying something of a second life on the streamer.
I’m reminded, for example, of the debut of Tomas Alfredson’s 2017 directorial debut The Snowman, starring Michael Fassbender, which rocketed all the way to #1 on Netflix as soon as it hit the service in April. And that was in spite of the fact that the movie was an absolute flop, reportedly making just $6.7 million in the US compared to a production budget of $34 million.
As for what We’re the Millers is about, the story here finds Sudeikis listing his neighbors to pretend to be his family in order to help him smuggle drugs into the US from Mexico. Sudeikis plays a small-time pot dealer in Denver, and the rest of the cast includes Jennifer Aniston, Emma Roberts, Nick Offerman, Kathryn Hahn, and Ed Helms.
While making the rounds to promote her Netflix movie Murder Mystery 2 earlier this year, Aniston confirmed that a planned We’re the Millers sequel movie had been scrapped. In terms of its box office reception, though, the movie actually did quite well, earning more than $150 million in North America compared to a budget of just $37 million. Critics and audiences, however, were sharply split on the film, with the Rotten Tomatoes score for We’re the Millers currently standing at 48% based on 161 reviews — while the audience score of 75%, based on more than 100,000 user ratings, probably explains why the movie was able to quickly dominate Netflix pretty much as soon as it hit the streamer.
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