Pedro Pascal & Matt Damon's $335 Million Creature Feature Is Quietly Dominating Streaming 9 Years Later

Matt Damon is one of the biggest movie stars and many of his films have become a hit. However, his team-up with Pedro Pascal in The Great Wall didn't lead to the expected success.

The creature feature premiered on Dec. 6, 2016 in Beijing, and was followed by a worldwide release in the U.S. on Feb. 17, 2017. The Great Wall had a lot of potential and a big budget, but it ended up receiving mixed reviews and failing a the box office. However, almost nine years later, The Great Wall is finding a new life on streaming, dominating the charts on HBO, per FlixPatrol.

The Great Wall was one of the many additions to Max, and it hit the platform on July 1. The creature feature didn't immediately rise to the charts, but it finally entered the Top 10 on July 4. The action fantasy debuted in seventh place on the domestic charts.

The Top 10 continues to be dominated by A Minecraft Movie, which is 2025's biggest Hollywood hit yet. It was followed by Mariska Hargitay's documentary, My Mom Jayne, about her late mother, Jayne Mansfield, which boasts a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes, the latest Looney Tunes addition The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, the Die Hard-inspired action sleeper hit Cleaner, starring Daisy Ridley, and The Hunger Games.

The Great Wall marked director Zhang Yimou's first English film, with a script by Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro and Tony Gilroy, from a story by Max Brooks, Edward Zwick, and Marshall Herskovitz. The film followed two European mercenary warriors who are imprisoned by the imperial Chinese forces within the Great Wall of China. However, they soon join forces with the Chinese to help combat a horde of Tao Tei, alien monsters that arrive from a meteorite and attack every sixty years.

The Great Wall Was a Critical and Commercial Failure

Despite its entertaining premise, The Great Wall received negative reviews. The film had a disappointing 35% approval from the critics, who agreed that the action adventure film is "neither as exciting nor as entertainingly bonkers as one might hope." The audience didn't enjoy it, either, giving it a negative 42% approval score on the Popcornmeter.

While Pedro Pascal wasn't as famous back in 2017 as he is today, Matt Damon's name was as popular as ever. Even so, The Great Wall didn't manage to become a box office hit and failed instead. With a budget of $150 million before marketing and distribution, it ended its run with only $334.4 million (via The Numbers). That means the film ended up losing around $75 million. From its total run, only $45.1 million was from the domestic market.

The film's controversies didn't help its run, either. The movie was accused of whitewashing and using the white savior narrative by having many white characters, including Damon as the lead. However, the director later replied to the criticism, highlighting that Damon's role was not intended for a Chinese actor.