Is Adam Sandler’s The Ridiculous 6 really the most popular film in Netflix history?

By Adam Poltrack January 7, 2016

As those in the industry can attest, the chief source for Netflix news is … well, Netflix.

The streaming giant controls the flow if its information and releases statistics at its leisure — mostly when it suits whatever narrative the company is trying to promulgate. That said, take the following news with as many grains of salt as you see fit.

ScreenCrush reports that, during the streamer’s keynote at CES, Netflix head of content acquisition Ted Sarandos claimed that Adam Sandler’s wacky western comedy The Ridiculous 6 has taken the platform by storm. According to Sarandos, the film has been streamed more in its first 30 days on Netflix than any film in the service’s history and has hit No. 1 in every single territory with access to the platform.

That’s a bit of a surprise given that — with 28 reviews counted thus far — the film has a 0 percent on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. No, that’s not a typo. As it stands, not a single critic has reviewed the film positively and the site describes the “Critics Consensus” thusly:

“Every bit as lazily offensive as its cast and concept would suggest, The Ridiculous 6 is standard couch fare for Adam Sandler fanatics and must-avoid viewing for film enthusiasts of every other persuasion.”

Either the public’s inexplicable love for Adam Sandler is causing folks to stream a crappy film at a record-breaking rate, or Netflix is interpreting its numbers … creatively. Remember, it recently signed Adam Sandler to a four-picture deal, and it would be awfully convenient if the first of those four was a runaway hit.

Of course, these numbers don’t tell us whether anyone is actually finishing the film, so it may be that a ton of subscribers just got excited to see a Netflix original, streamed five minutes of it, realized it was terrible, and went back to watching House of Cards or Making a Murderer.

Either way, it looks like this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Sandler and the streaming behemoth. Stay tuned.

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