M. Night Shyamalan's $83M Thriller Lands On Netflix's Global Chart Months After Its 2024 Release (2025)

A 2024 M. Night Shyamalan movie has become a global-level streaming success just months after its theatrical release. Shyalaman is a writer and director whose work has become more or less synonymous with explosive plot twists. His breakout came with the release of the smash hit supernatural horror movie The Sixth Sense in 1999. In addition to grossing $672.8 million against its $40 million budget, the movie earned six Academy Awards nominations, including two for Shyamalan himself (for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay).

M. Night Shyamalan movies have had many ups and downs since 1999. Following the highs of his post-Sixth Sense movies Unbreakable and Signs, he entered a critical fallow period between 2006's Lady in the Water and 2013's After Earth, a stretch that also included the notoriously maligned titles The Last Airbender and The Happening. In the mid-2010s, he began rehabilitating his image with better-received modern thrillers such as 2015's The Visit, 2016's Split, 2023's Knock at the Cabin, and his 2024 movie that is now a streaming success.

Trap Is Charting On Netflix

The Shyamalan Movie Debuted In August 2024

Trap has now become a Netflix success. The 2024 M. Night Shyamalan movie starred Josh Hartnett as doting father Cooper, who brings his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a pop concert, only to discover that it is an elaborate sting operation designed to capture a serial killer: him. The Trap cast also includes Saleka Night Shyamalan, Alison Pill, Hayley Mills, and Jonathan Langdon. Overall, it was a middling success in theaters, grossing $83.6 million against its reported budget of $30 million, which likely placed its break-even point somewhere around $75 million.

Netflix has now calculated their global Top 10 chart of the most-watched English-language movies for the week of March 10 through 16. Thanks to 6.7 million viewers worldwide accumulating a total of 11.8 million viewing hours, Trap has debuted at No. 4 on the chart, behind fellow 2024 theatrical release Kraven the Hunter and the Netflix original movies Plankton: The Movie and The Electric State. See the full chart below:

The Shyamalan thriller has managed this success in spite of the fact that it is only streaming in the United States at the time of writing, and is thus not having its position boosted by viewers from other regions.

What This Means For Trap

Streaming Could Provide It With A Huge Boost

Although Trap reviews were middling, it performed well in theaters. However, streaming may be the true place where the M. Night Shyamalan thriller can thrive. The movie competing at a global level over the course of a single week in spite of only being available in one region speaks to the fact that it has already found a way to strongly connect with a wide at-home audience, which could help it become an even bigger success overall. To compare, Plankton, which only had roughly twice as many viewers, is currently in the Top 10 in eight times as many countries.

While Kraven the Hunter is also a U.S.-only release that has landed on the global chart, Trap has shown great potential by keeping pace with the 2024 superhero movie. Even though Kraven was a theatrical flop, earning $62 million worldwide against a roughly $120 million budget, it has proven to be a major streaming success. In fact, at the time of writing, the Marvel movie has charted above Netflix's new big-budget release The Electric State in the United States for three consecutive days. Thus, Trap falling only slightly behind the movie is hardly a demerit.

Our Take On Trap's Streaming Success

Shyamalan's Future Looks Bright, Wherever It Lands

If things continue to trend in this direction, it seems possible that future Shyamalan movies will be geared toward streaming exclusive releases rather than debuting in theaters. However, given Trap's initial theatrical success, an upcoming movie of his (a roster that includes a Nicholas Sparks adaptation) would likely have to be an outright theatrical failure and a streaming success in order for that transition to actually occur. However, M. Night Shyamalan does have ample experience that could help him thrive when crafting streaming exclusive movies.

While no feature-length M. Night Shyamalan projects have debuted on streaming, he was the executive producer, showrunner, and occasional director of the Apple TV+ series Servant, which ran for four seasons between 2019 and 2024. At the time of writing, it is tied as the longest-running scripted series ever released on the platform. While Slow Horses and For All Mankind have both been renewed for future seasons that will see those shows eventually outpace it, its success shows that Shyamalan has a handle on how to guide a project to streaming success, should his post-Trap career move in that direction.

Source: Netflix

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Trap

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Thriller Mystery

6/10

30 7.6/10

Release Date

August 2, 2024

Director

M. Night Shyamalan

Writers

M. Night Shyamalan

Cast

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  Josh Hartnett

• 

  Hayley Mills

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