Mark Wahlberg’s Forgotten Crime Thriller Climbs Paramount+ Streaming Charts
Mark Wahlberg's 2014 crime thriller "The Gambler" has resurfaced as a hit on Paramount+, climbing the platform's domestic streaming charts more than a decade after its lacklustre theatrical release. The film's revival fits a pattern in which Wahlberg's theatrical releases, though only modestly successful at the box office, go on to find much larger audiences once they reach streaming, reinforcing his standing as one of the industry's highest-paid and most bankable streaming stars.
"The Gambler" was directed by Rupert Wyatt, fresh off "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," and written by William Monahan, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of "The Departed," which also starred Wahlberg. The project originally had Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio attached before Wahlberg and Wyatt took over. Per Forbes, Wahlberg now commands $20–25 million per film and has headlined three Netflix movies, two each for Prime Video and Apple TV+, and one for Paramount+ over the past six years, with FlixPatrol data showing "The Gambler" currently among the platform's most-watched titles.
- "The Gambler" (2014) is now trending on Paramount+, per FlixPatrol.
- Scorsese and DiCaprio were originally attached before Wahlberg replaced them.
- Wahlberg reportedly earns $20–25 million per film as a streaming star.
New here? Start with this
The Gambler was a 2014 crime drama starring Mark Wahlberg as a literature professor whose gambling addiction pulls him into debt with dangerous lenders. It was a remake of a 1974 film of the same name, and although it had a strong pedigree behind the camera, it did not do particularly well at the cinema when it first came out.
Wahlberg has built a reputation in Hollywood as a dependable, if not always critically acclaimed, leading man, and one of the industry's highest earners. Several of his films have followed a similar path to The Gambler: modest cinema takings followed by much bigger audiences once they land on streaming services, a pattern that has become closely associated with his career in recent years.
The film's reappearance on the Paramount+ charts over a decade after its release is part of this wider trend, in which older, previously overlooked titles find fresh popularity through streaming platforms rather than traditional box office performance.