Published Sep 8, 2026, 11:57 AM EDT
Felipe Rangel is a Movie and TV Journalist ScreenRant. He has been writing about movies and TV since 2021. Felipe joined ScreenRant in 2022, working across different teams, covering everything from breaking news to features to reviews and more.
Felipe is a writer who is an avid film and TV fan, with superhero movies and series being his biggest passion. He graduated from college in 2019, having studied Journalism. Before college, he spent a month studying at the Oxford English Centre. His superhero knowledge expands to the comics, with his undergraduate thesis being “Politics Reflected In American Comics.”
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Russell Crowe stars in a tactical war movie that has just surpassed a major streaming milestone many years after it was released. Crowe’s career is filled with remarkable movies, as the actor has etched his name in cinematic history with all-time performances. Among those are Maximus in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, Inspector Javert in the musical* Les Misérables*, and many more. The actor has shown that he can traverse different genres well. Among Crowe’s best is the war movie genre, with the actor having appeared in films like Nuremberg, Land of Bad, The Water Diviner, and more over the years.
War movies in general have become quite popular as of late. Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant with Jake Gyllenhaal, Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front, and more have found immense success on streaming in recent years. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a war-related movie, even though it did not focus on combat, nearly broke the $1 billion mark worldwide. Now, it is time for Crowe to once again be at the forefront of a genre hit, this time through Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World finding new life on Apple TV in the United States as it crosses a streaming milestone.
Crowe’s *Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World *has just passed the mark of 30 days, exactly a full month, trending on Apple TV’s Top 10 Movies chart in the United States. The tactical war movie was originally released in theaters on November 14, 2003, grossing just $211.6 million against a reported budget of $150 million, which was not enough to get it in the break-even zone between $300 million and $375 million. As such, the newfound streaming success of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is the best possible news for Crowe and director Peter Weir.
*Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World *holds the 5th longest streak on the Apple TV movie chart nationwide. It ranks lower than Brad Pitt’s *Troy *at 45 days, the recent Apple TV original movie focused on pickleball, The Dink, at 46 days, Pitt again with the high-octane *F1 *at a whopping 270 days, and the Apple TV sci-fi thriller The Gorge at a gargantuan total of 550 days on the streamer’s Top 10 Movies chart. That said, Crowe’s war movie stands higher than a couple of them on the pure chart, as Apple TV’s 4th most-watched movie in the US.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World’s streaming resurgence on Apple TV could be the sign that the franchise needed to finally return. Given its box office failure, Crowe never came back as Captain Jack Aubrey for a Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World sequel. However, on October 24, 2024, 20th Century Studios head Steve Asbell told The Hollywood Reporter that the studio had a great script for a Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World prequel, it only needed a director.
As Crowe’s war movie was based on Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey–Maturin nautical historical series of novels, of which there are 20, there are plenty yet to pick from to bring the franchise back, and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World’s Apple TV milestone suggests the movie franchise could work better on streaming.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World ](/db/movie/master-and-commander-the-far-side-of-the-world/)
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Patrick O’Brian, Peter Weir, John Collee