Paul W.S. Anderson has carved out a niche for himself over the last two decades as someone with a reputation for churning out monotonous video game adaptations, albeit ones that tend to do decent business at the box office. When he did try to branch out and tackle a blockbuster historical epic, Pompeii fittingly ended up going down in flames.
With an estimated budget of around $100 million, the effects-heavy retelling of the infamous historical incident as a disaster-driven romance flopped spectacularly after earning less than $118 million from theaters, while Kiefer Sutherland’s scenery-chewing performance earned him a Worst Supporting Actor nomination at the Razzies.
Meanwhile, historians and scholars were left up in arms by the massive creative liberties Anderson opted to take with the facts, and a general shrug of indifference from both critics and general audiences ensured that Pompeii certainly wasn’t an event people were going to find themselves discussing weeks into the future, never mind months, years, and centuries.
That being said, the genre has proven itself countless times over to be one of streaming’s most reliable performers, which has been underlined yet again after Pompeii immediately entered the Top 10 most-watched list on Starz in both the United States and United Kingdom after being added to the library on the first of the month, per FlixPatrol.
There are countless better ancient stories to spend your time on, but there may not be too many worse, but that doesn’t seem to have swayed opinion as Anderson’s most expensive project ever embarks on another new lease of life on-demand.