The Critically Reviled Matt Damon Bomb that He Called a “Turkey” Is Leaving Netflix

The film landscape has evolved drastically since the 2010s, when Hollywood was blatantly baiting Chinese audiences with crossover films designed to capitalize on the Middle Kingdom’s burgeoning theatrical marketplace. This was when films such as Transformers: Age of Extinction and Pacific Rim staged large set pieces in Hong Kong, and movies such as xXx: Return of Xander Cage featured Chinese stars. This was also when Legendary Pictures successfully lured Chinese icon Zhang Yimou to direct his first major Hollywood movie, The Great Wall. The film emerged as a box office disappointment, leaving star Matt Damon and his daughter particularly underwhelmed. But audiences that haven’t yet checked it out have only until October 2 to do so, as it’s leaving Netflix U.K.

The Great Wall was built on an admittedly intriguing premise, which posited an alternate history explaining why the man-made wonder was created in the first place. According to the film, The Great Wall of China was built to keep monsters out of the mainland; think of the movie as a massively mounted alternative to the recent Apple hit The Gorge. Released in 2017, The Great Wall featured Damon as the archetypal foreigner in a mysterious new land, sort of like the character that Cosmo Jarvis plays on Shōgun. Damon was paired with Pedro Pascal, who’d just broken out on Game of Thrones. This marked his first major studio movie in a lead role. He’s now one of the most in-demand actors around.

Produced on a reported budget of $150 million, The Great Wall grossed just over $330 million globally and lost a reported $75 million. It earned mixed reviews and was criticized for leaning on the white savior trope, and is currently sitting at a 35% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics’ consensus reads, “For a Yimou Zhang film featuring Matt Damon and Willem Dafoe battling ancient monsters, The Great Wall is neither as exciting nor as entertainingly bonkers as one might hope.”

Damon Knew ‘The Great Wall’ Was Crumbling

Damon was quite disappointed by the experience. On Marc Maron‘s podcast, Damon admitted that he knew that the film was doomed when he saw that Hollywood producers were pressuring Zhang to compromise on his vision for the movie. “I was like, this is exactly how disasters happen,” he told Maron. “It doesn’t cohere. It doesn’t work as a movie.” Damon said that his daughter continues to make fun of The Great Wall. “Whenever she talks about the movie, she calls it ‘The Wall.’ And I’m like, come on, it’s called The Great Wall. And she’s like, ‘Dad, there’s nothing great about that movie.’ She’s one of the funniest people I know. I came to consider that the definition of a professional actor; knowing you’re in a turkey and going, ‘OK, I’ve got four more months. I am definitely going to die here, but I’m doing it’. That’s as shitty as you can feel creatively, I think. I hope to never have that feeling again,” he said.

Damon will next star alongside Ben Affleck in The RIP, and then in Christopher Nolan‘s The Odyssey. The Great Wall will leave Netflix U.K. on October 2, so this is your chance to check it out. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.