Rami Malek’s $60 Million Spy-Thriller Flop Is Formally a Streaming Hit on Prime Video

Successful an Oscar could make you a star, however it doesn’t essentially make you a bankable one. Rami Malek discovered this after the success of Bohemian Rhapsody, the $900 million-plus blockbuster that received him the Academy Award for greatest actor and seemingly positioned the Mr. Robotic star for an enormous film profession. Since then, Malek’s observe document has been combined. He performed a James Bond villain within the massively profitable No Time to Die and popped up as a nuclear physicist in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, however his different tasks haven’t all the time linked. He was a part of the star-studded ensemble solid of the Thirties homicide thriller Amsterdam, which earned simply over $30 million worldwide regardless of its spectacular roster. Extra just lately, he starred reverse Russell Crowe in Nuremberg as U.S. Military psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who’s tasked with evaluating Nazi leaders after World Conflict II. The historic drama did respectable enterprise, however it wasn’t precisely an enormous mainstream hit.

The final time Malek took high billing was in a 2025 spy thriller that tried to show the unconventional actor into an equally unconventional motion hero. It earned lower than $100 million worldwide throughout its theatrical run, however greater than a yr later, the film is getting one other shot with audiences on streaming. The Novice is presently the No. 2 film on Prime Video within the U.S., in accordance with FlixPatrol. Much more impressively, it has spent 21 days within the platform’s high 10, suggesting Malek’s newest main position might have discovered the viewers it struggled to succeed in in theaters.

What’s The Novice about?

Based mostly on Robert Littell’s 1981 novel, The Novice stars Malek as Charlie Heller, an excellent however introverted CIA decoder whose spouse, Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan), is killed throughout a terrorist assault in London. When his superiors refuse to research the assault, he blackmails the company into giving him the coaching and assets to seek out his spouse’s killers on his personal.

His character has zero discipline expertise and struggles with the physicality of the job, however is ready to depend on his intelligence to plan elaborate methods to trace and take down his enemies. It is primarily a revenge fantasy constructed across the concept of what would occur if the man behind the pc needed to turn out to be the motion hero — an IT employee to Liam Neeson in Taken hero’s journey of types.

It’s a intelligent twist on the acquainted spy-thriller system, with Malek’s unconventional hero giving The Novice a lot of its enchantment, even when it wasn’t a smash hit in theaters.

What’s subsequent for Rami Malek?

Malek took a step again from motion along with his newest challenge. He stars in Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love, a musical fantasy set in late-Eighties New York that premiered at Cannes earlier this yr. Malek performs Jimmy George, a efficiency artist dwelling with AIDS, alongside Tom Sturridge, Rebecca Corridor, Luther Ford, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.

However The Novice’s newfound reputation might make the case for Malek as an motion star yet again. A yr after its disappointing theatrical run, audiences are lastly exhibiting up for his unconventional tackle the style. Whether or not that interprets into one other motion gig for the actor stays to be seen.