Netflix RomCom “Hit Man” Skips Full Theatrical Run — And With it, Any Chance of a Profit
Today, the Netflix romcom Hit Man — already a critical darling — hits theaters, but you might have trouble finding where it’s playing. That’s because Netflix, bafflingly, is only giving the film about a fake hit man (he conducts sting operations where the hit man solicitors get arrested) who accidentally falls in love with one of his targets a two-week limited theatrical release before it becomes available to stream on June 7th. Why is this baffling? Well, it’s a romantic comedy starring Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick), and the last Powel-led romcom made 8–9 times its budget.
Anyone But You, a romantic comedy starring Powell and Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria), released in December 2023 and made headlines for making $219M worldwide on a $25M budget. It was an important reminder for Hollywood — romcoms are low risk, high reward. It helped that Anyone But You was the only game in town. It has passed out of vogue in the past decade for studios to send their romcoms to theaters. If they make them at all, they go straight to streaming, which increasingly feels like the modern-day made-for-TV/straight-to-video format. This makes sense for some films, but just as often, it seems like a missed opportunity to have legitimately great films take their chances at the box office and make a real splash. Anyone But You is nothing so special, but at even halfway decent, audiences ran to the theaters for the only romcom available.
Anyone But You’s success catapulted its stars into the celebrity stratosphere. Now, only a few months later, Powell is rolling out another romcom, one that critics are already raving about, and Netflix isn’t betting big on a major theatrical release? If this sounds crazy to you, you’re not alone.
To be clear, when a film goes straight to streaming it gives up a very crucial thing — the possibility of making a profit. It’s good to keep a robust streaming library to keep subscribers on the hook, but it feels like a waste when you throw away a great movie on just padding your streaming offerings. With an $8.8M budget — Netflix acquired the film for $20M at the Toronto Film Festival — Hit Man is poised to ride Anyone But You’s coattails and make a massive profit…and Netflix is turning that down. This has prompted several of my fellow critics to bemoan on social media something to the effect of “doesn’t Netflix like money???”
(Ironically, the action-romcom The Fall Guy is experiencing the opposite right now — $131M BO, so far, on a $125M budget. It’s an action-movie budget with romcom returns. Oops.)
So what exactly is going on here? Netflix does in fact have reasons for doing what it’s doing, they’re just not very good ones. Netflix created the streaming model, and so they’re often very resistant to do anything that goes against it, that they might view as hurting their brand as the streaming service. A nice, big, long theatrical run for one of their films is something they view as exactly that. It’s a tacit acknowledgment that streaming isn’t everything. That often, there are way better ways to make money.
(It’s the same reason they refuse to air new TV episodes weekly even though every other streaming service has returned to the weekly drops — because they created the binge model, and they can’t admit that it doesn’t always work. That’s why you have to wait an entire month for Bridgerton season 3, part II. They know it’s better to spread out the release of your popular shows.)
The thing is, not admitting that the box office is the only way to make a profit on a film is not actually helping Netflix in any way. Everyone knows it’s still the only real way to make a profit, whether they admit it or not, so might as well say screw it and make some money. What’s more, it’s actually better for everyone if Hit Man goes to theaters, including Netflix, because movies that have gone to theaters first generally perform way better once they hit the streamer. Netflix could have its cake and eat it too.
The sad part is that this isn’t the first time this has happened to Powell. When Anyone But You broke out and everyone was hailing Powell as our new romcom hero, I was telling anyone who would listen that Powell was already a romcom leading man, had been for years. In 2018, Powell starred alongside Zoey Deutch in the Netflix romcom Set It Up. The movie was fairly popular, and I myself have seen it numerous times (I just rewatched it a couple nights ago, and it holds up). But movies that go straight to streaming, even well-liked films like this one, tend to disappear into the ether. Imagine if Set It Up, Anyone But You, and Hit Man had all gone to theaters instead of just Anyone But You. Powell could be a romcom god.
Not that this is stopping Powell from promoting the hell out of Hit Man — check out his Hollywood Reporter cover story. Truly, I wish him all the luck since it looks like a really fun film, and it deserves its due. I remain skeptical though. Even Powell admits in said cover story that you can only get so far with streaming, which is why even though he and Sweeney had the chance to send Anyone But You to streaming for a nice payday, they decided to take their chances at the box office. When a movie goes to theaters, it feels like an event, and people respond to it accordingly, and if your movie actually starts doing well, that’s something everyone will be talking about. It reveals a simple truth — money talks.
