The 2014 Liam Neeson Western comedy A Million Ways to Die in the West has become a streaming hit on Netflix. The movie, which was co-written and directed by Seth MacFarlane, was a disappointment, earning a 33% Rotten Tomatoes score in addition to an $87.2 million box office haul that likely didn’t earn it a profit given its $40 million budget (which likely necessitated an $80 million return minimum) and publicity costs.
In addition to Neeson and MacFarlane, the A Million Ways to Die in the West cast also includes Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Giovanni Ribisi, and Neil Patrick Harris.
Netflix has now calculated their Top 10 most-watched movies in the United States for the week of June 3 through June 9. A Million Ways to Die in the West has landed on the chart at No. 9.
This is its first week on the chart, and it has landed alongside other new movies on the platform such as the Netflix original hits Under Paris and Hit Man, the Oscar-winning kaiju movie Godzilla Minus One, and the animated titles The Lego Movie and Home.
A Million Ways To Die In The West Could Usher In A New Era For Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson’s Career Is Taking A Turn The Movie Predicted A Decade Ago
The Seth MacFarlane comedy, which starred Neeson as the dastardly outlaw Clinch Leatherwood, failed to divert the Oscar-nominated actor’s career from the path it was then on, which saw him starring in a variety of action movies in the wake of his 2009 smash hit Taken.
That era of his career was still turning out robust dividends, as much as it may have been a surprise considering the fact that the actor had previously been best known for dramas.
Liam Neeson has starred in more than two dozen action movies between 2009 and the time of writing, including Non-Stop , The Commuter , Cold Pursuit , and Blacklight .
MacFarlane continued to offer Neeson comedy roles including a Ted 2 cameo and an episode of the sci-fi satire show The Orville. Ultimately, those titles and other minor Neeson comedy roles in the mid-2010s were essentially just blips on the radar of his career at the time.
However, the newfound streaming success of A Million Ways to Die in the West may have come at the perfect time for the 72-year-old actor to make yet another surprising career pivot.
Neeson is currently set to star as Frank Drebin Jr. in the upcoming The Naked Gun reboot, resurrecting the three-movie crime spoof franchise that formerly starred the late Leslie Nielsen. If that movie becomes a hit at the level of Taken, it could dictate the types of roles that the star gets offered for the ensuing decade. With A Million Ways to Die in the West potentially proving that Netflix audiences are now hungry to see Neeson in a comic light, the comedy genre may see a sudden rise in lead roles for the star.
