Controversial Romance Movie Starring Game Of Thrones Actor Finds Streaming Success 9 Years Later

A controversial romance movie with a Game of Thrones star has become a streaming success. The show was a launching point for many of its cast members. One such talent was Emilia Clarke, who played Daenerys Targaryen in the George R.R. Martin fantasy adaptation across all eight seasons. Clarke was 24 years old when she made her debut as part of the Game of Thrones cast in 2011. Prior to the HBO series, her only roles had been a single episode of the TV series Doctors, the short film Drop the Dog, and a part in the TV movie Triassic Attack.

Game of Thrones was life-changing for Clarke. She was nominated for four Emmys for the series, including three for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series and one for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. After the conclusion of Game of Thrones in 2019, Clarke has gone on to have roles in other projects including Last Christmas, The Pod Generation, and Marvel Studios’ Secret Invasion. Now, a movie Clarke was in during her Game of Thrones tenure is finding streaming success nearly a decade later.

Me Before You Has Become A Streaming Success

Me Before You Was Controversial

Me Before You has found success on streaming. The 2016 romance film is based on the book by Jojo Moyes, who also penned the movie’s script. Clarke plays Lou Clark, a woman who falls in love with a man she is taking care of, who has recently been paralyzed. Though Me Before You was a box office success, the film was incredibly controversial in the disability community. The plot’s main premise centers around the male lead’s desire for assisted suicide, leading many to claim the film promoted negative messages about people with disabilities.

Per FlixPatrol, Me Before You has now become a streaming success. The film made it to Prime Video’s Top 10 movies in the United States today (January 13), squeaking into the no. 10 slot. Whether it will stay there in the coming days remains to be seen, but it has drummed up significant viewership today. Other movies making the chart today include The Fall Guy, In the Land of Saints and Sinners, Tag, The Creator, The Equalizer 2, A Quiet Place: Day One, Red One, The Equalizer, and The Beekeeper.

Our Take On Me Before You’s Streaming Success

Controversial Romance Movies Can Be Popular

In some ways, Me Before You‘s successes have always had an inexplicable quality. Some called for the boycotting of the film at the time when it came out, saying that it perpetuated the harmful idea that being disabled made a life not worth living, due to its premise and the journey of its protagonist. Still, Me Before You was an incredible success at the box office. Made on an estimated budget of just $20 million, Me Before You made over $208 million worldwide. This showed that the romance movie could succeed in spite of poor reviews and controversy.

In this sense, it is unsurprising why Me Before You would do well on streaming. It is hard to say what exactly is prompting more interest in the movie now, but its success does fall in line with recent trends in streaming overall. It Ends with Us has also been doing well on streaming in recent months. It is also a romance movie that caused controversy during and after its release. Even though Me Before You is an older example of this phenomenon, and has a different controversy at its core, it might pique the interest of romance genre lovers who want to get in on the discourse.

As a whole, Me Before You‘s lifetime of success — in theaters and on streaming — speaks to the role of two ongoing industry concerns: the portrayal of disability on screen, and the role of controversy in making a movie succeed. The portrayal of disability on screen has been a hot button issue in Hollywood over the last decade or so. While casting choices have been changing for the better at times, there are still too many cases wherein an able-bodied actor plays a person with a disability, or a problematic message about disability is being conveyed.

Still, movies like Me Before You have been successful despite boycott attempts and backlash. When examined in conjunction with the success of 2024’s It Ends with Us, there seems to be a lot of hand waving among romance genre viewers. That is, even when a book or film in the genre is declared by many to have a glaring problematic element, audiences seem willing to watch these movies anyway, or are perhaps even fueled further by the controversy itself.