Netflix’s recent changes to how it measures viewership data is already proving to be a bone of contention among creatives, but it has at least done the unthinkable and dredged a largely irrelevant superhero movie back from the depths, with Robert Rodriguez’s We Can Be Heroes now officially designated as one of the platform’s 10 most successful in-house features of all-time.
In fact, it’s moved all the way up to sixth position by way of 137 million total views, even if there’s a lot of people out there who won’t remember that it was even a thing that existed. To be fair, it did land a solid Rotten Tomatoes critical approval rating of 74 percent, even if an audience average of 41 percent tells the other side of the story.
That being said, Netflix did announce that a sequel was in development just a month after We Can Be Heroes arrived in December of 2020, with Rodriguez confirming that he would be putting all of his hats back on again after serving as the writer, director, producer, cinematographer, editor, and composer of the original as the multi-hyphenate filmmaker is wont to do.
However, things have gone virtually radio silent since then, presumably on account of the Desperado architect jumping into bed with Disney to take on a key role on The Book of Boba Fett, which was then summarily trashed by fans as the worst Star Wars series yet. Either way, now that We Can Be Heroes has re-cemented itself as one Netflix’s biggest-ever hits, don’t be surprised if the company ends up dredging the follow-up back up from the depths of development hell in short order.