The 1990s saw the John Grisham adaptation become a wildly popular subgenre for a hot minute, with countless legal thrillers based on the author’s work emerging in a remarkably short space of time. Depending on your personal preference, you could make an incredibly solid argument stating the case that none of them were better than The Firm.
Directed by two-time Academy Award winner Syndey Pollack, it went on to become the highest-grossing Grisham film ever made by way of a substantial $270 million box office haul. The Firm would also land a pair of Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Score, while dueling stars Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman deservedly won huge praise for their performances.
What you may not realize is that a sequel series emerged from the woodwork almost 20 years later, with Josh Lucas stepping in to replace Cruise as Mitch McDeere in a fairly straightforward litigation-centric procedural. Despite ending with a cliffhanger at the end of its 22nd episode, The Firm was canned after a single season due to dwindling ratings, never to be see or heard from again.
It’s the fantastic feature that’s been lawyering up on streaming, though, with the classic having convinced a jury of its peers that it’s once again worthy of finding a brand new audience. As per FlixPatrol, the tale of big conspiracies and even bigger coats has charted on Netflix’s global most-watched list just shy of its 30th anniversary, and it’s definitely one worth watching if you’ve got a soft spot for the legal genre. And to be honest, who doesn’t when it’s handled with so much style?