If you are asked about the most successful movies on Netflix, several will surely come to mind: The K-Pop Warriors, Glass Onion, Don’t Look Up, Bird Box, Marriage Story, All Quiet on the Western Front… Well, very few of them are in the global top 10, which includes a good handful of things that you have probably seen and immediately forgotten like The Gray Man (directed by the Russo Brothers, no less), Back in Action, or The Adam Project. But if there is one that has probably gone unnoticed by everyone despite its 172 million views, it is…. Hand Luggage.
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Hand Luggage premiered on December 13, 2024, prepared for the Christmas season, and had a very modest budget of just 47 million dollars. What no one expected is that this small filler movie would end up costing Netflix only 0.27 euros per viewing (if we divide the budget by the viewers). To give us an idea, it has the same number of viewers as blockbusters like Frozen 2, Jurassic Park, or Ben-Hur had in theaters. It goes without saying, however, that it has not left the mark of any of these hits. Just what was missing.
Clearly, in the director’s chair is a performer like few in Hollywood, one who has earned the respect of the industry by doing exactly what is expected of them: the Catalan Jaume Collet-Serra, who just as easily makes Black Adam or Jungle Cruise as he does Orphan or Blue Hell. Serra uses all his wisdom to tell the story of a police officer who, on Christmas Eve, is coerced into allowing a nerve gas to enter a flight packed with 250 people, starring Taron Egerton and Jason Bateman. It may all sound like a “side project that no one understands why it’s in the top 3 on Netflix,” but there is an explanation for its success.
The movie is not bad at all; it is a perfect entertainment for vacations, and Netflix made sure to promote it heavily, sharing advertising with Squid Game, which at that time was releasing its season 2. That said, if we take a look at the list of December 2024 releases from any website, no one initially set their eyes on it, focusing more on other works that went unnoticed like María or Seis Triple Ocho. No one expected that Hand Luggage would really interest anyone, but if there is something Netflix knows how to do better than any other streaming service, it is creating hits where there was absolutely nothing before.
You might be surprised to know which two movies surpass Hand Luggage, because one is currently trending and the other was a rarity that, in some way, has managed to stay at the top spot since 2021. In second place, we have K-Pop Warriors, and in first place… Red Notice, that movie with Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot that has been watched by 230 million people around the world over the years but, for some reason, still hasn’t had a sequel (it’s supposed that two are in production, but not much more is known). It doesn’t really matter, though: Netflix is capable of producing movies that are hits, but not ones that we remember the name of enough to create a franchise.
If you have never seen Carry-On Luggage, maybe this is the time to do so. Although you never know where the next big hit from Netflix is going to come from, you do know one thing: there will be one, and it forces you to be subscribed so you don’t miss out on “the conversation”… Or whatever has been going on around Carry-On Luggage. Has anyone really seen it?
