A Shia LaBeouf crime movie directed by David Ayer has become a streaming success four years after its initial release. LaBeouf first rose to prominence as a child actor when he starred in the Disney Channel sitcom Even Stevens, going on to appear in quite a few projects as a teenager, including Holes and The Even Stevens Movie. As an adult, he has appeared in a number of projects, including blockbusters such as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and the first three live-action Transformers movies.
LaBeouf has previously collaborated with director David Ayer in his 2014 war movie Fury. However, the director and screenwriter is known for a wide variety of other тιтles, most notably the 2016 DC Extended Universe outing Suicide Squad. Other prominent David Ayer movies include the 2012 Jake Gyllenhaal crime drama End of Watch and the 2017 Netflix fantasy movie Bright, the latter of which was one of the streaming service’s first major ventures into bringing blockbuster-style movies to their platform.
The Tax Collector Is Finding New Life On Streaming
The Movie Debuted In 2020
Now, Shia LaBeouf and David Ayer’s follow-up collaboration The Tax Collector is finding a new audience on streaming. The 2020 movie stars LaBeouf as a violent tax collector known as “Creeper” who finds himself in the middle of a gang war along with his partner David Cuevas (Bobby Soto). The Tax Collector cast also includes George Lopez, Jay Reeves, Lana Parrilla, and Jimmy Smits. The movie was a critical and commercial flop in 2020, grossing $1.3 million against its $4 million budget and earning a dismal Rotten Tomatoes score of 17%.
The Tax Collector was released in theaters in August 2020, during a time when global shutdowns amid the COVID-19 pandemic were still heavily affecting ticket sales.
At the time of writing, The Tax Collector has made its way to No. 2 on the daily chart of the most-watched movies on Hulu. It has been holding this position for at least six consecutive days, and is currently ranked behind only the 1997 romance epic тιтanic, which is the fourth highest-grossing movie of all time worldwide. Prior to Thursday, it was No. 2 behind the 2024 Scott Adkins action-thriller Take Cover, which has since dropped to No. 4.
What This Means For The Tax Collector
Audiences Are Enjoying The David Ayer Movie
The performance of the Shia LaBeouf movie on Hulu speaks to the fact that it does have an ability to connect with audiences and may have been primarily hampered by a pandemic-depressed box office in 2020. While the negative Tax Collector reviews likely did not help, it has a much better audience score on Rotten Tomatoes with a firmly Fresh 73% on the Popcornmeter. This could indicate that it will continue to thrive on streaming, now that it has found its audience.
Source: Hulu
