Denzel Washington's Only Western Is Finding New Fans On Prime Video

At this point in their careers, Denzel Washington and Antoine Fuqua simply trust each other and it's not hard to see why. The pair's first collaboration, 2001's "Training Day" resulted in an Oscar win for Denzel, which considering this was the first movie in which the esteemed star played a villain, is a pretty good outcome — even more so when you consider Denzel's "Training Day" casting sparked so much controversy that he was warned against taking the role by the NAACP.

In the years that followed, Washington and Fuqua worked together multiple times, most notably on the "Equalizer" films which saw Washington going full John Wick-mode in a trilogy of action thrillers based on the 1985 CBS series. But "The Equalizer" and its sequels aren't the only Fuqua/Washington team-ups to come in the wake of "Training Day." In 2016, the director oversaw yet another Denzel Washington first with "The Magnificent Seven," which represented the star's Western debut. Despite being in Hollywood since the mid-70s, Washington had never once appeared in a Western, which would be almost as surprising as learning he didn't play a bad guy for 25 years if the Western genre hadn't declined in popularity so much since the 1970s. In 2016, however, we saw the Hollywood vet play lawman Sam Chisholm in a remake of "The Magnificent Seven," in which he assembles a ragtag group of gunslingers to take on industrialist Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) and rescue the town of Rose Creek.

While the movie certainly wasn't Denzel's biggest hit, it proved surprisingly popular for a Western in the mid-2010s, even if the reviews were less than stellar. Now, however, Washington and his Magnificent Seven can claim to have triumphed over what is surely their most formidable opponent yet, streaming audiences, as "The Magnificent Seven" has just debuted on the Prime Video charts.

"The Magnificent Seven" was a remake of John Sturges' famous 1960 Western of the same name, which starred Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Horst Buchholz, and Brad Dexter as the titular crew, who take on a gang of bandits led by a criminal named Calvera, played by Eli Wallach, who sadly died with one regret over "The Magnificent Seven." The film itself was a remake of Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai," and proved popular among U.S. audiences, though Kurosawa claimed to have been entertained but disappointed by the Western version of his classic.

56 years after that initial remake, Denzel Washington's "The Magnificent Seven" could be said to have done much the same, entertaining audiences while also disappointing critics. Still, the movie, which also starred Chris Pratt, Vincent D'Onofrio, Lee Byung-hun, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, and Washington's "Training Day" co-star Ethan Hawke, was by no means a failure, especially considering the genre. Now, it's once again proving popular, this time among the Prime Video crowds who, according to streaming viewership tracker FlixPatrol, have sent the movie into the streamer's charts in the U.S.

"The Magnificent Seven" hit Prime Video on March 6, 2025 and has taken a while to find its audience. Now, though, it seems subscribers have managed to unearth Denzel's Western debut from the mounds of media on Amazon's server, as the movie hit number 10 on the Prime Video charts on March 31. Whether it can maintain its spot, or indeed rise up the rankings, remains to be seen, but it proves the film's original success was no fluke — though that "success" did come with a few caveats.

After being a reliable box office draw for Hollywood throughout the first half of the 20th century, the Western genre slowly fell out of favor. Once the '70s seemingly proved audiences were moving on, Hollywood simply stopped making so many Westerns, and by 2016, high-profile examples of the genre were few and far between. There have been some notable modern successes, however, such as Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" and the Coen brothers' "True Grit." On the whole, though, Westerns are nowhere near what they once were.

As such, Antoine Fuqua's "The Magnificent Seven" was seen as a success after it made $162 million on a $90 million budget. Typically, studios would have to double the budget just to break even, so Fuqua's Western likely didn't make any profit when you consider marketing costs on top of the $90 million spent. Still, $162 million for a Western in 2016 wasn't bad at all, and proved that the genre could still appeal to audiences, provided you have the right stars in place.

That said, a 64% Rotten Tomatoes surely isn't exactly what Fuqua and Washington were hoping for. Critics weren't too impressed by "The Magnificent Seven," which was seen as entertaining enough for an action movie even while it didn't do anything original with the source material. You might say this would make it difficult for "The Magnificent Seven" to do much better than number 10 on Prime Video, but just recently we saw Sandra Bullock's "Premonition," with its 7% RT score, triumph on Hulu, so anything's possible in the streaming sphere. What's more, considering the current number one on Prime Video U.S. is Nicole Kidman's "Holland," which currently bears a dismaying 27% on Rotten Tomatoes, Denzel and his gunslingers might just be in with a chance of taking that top spot.