2020 was one of the worst years anyone is ever going to experience, with the world being brought to a standstill by the onset of the pandemic. There are very few positives to be drawn from a period when everyone was largely confined to their homes for months on end, but it did lead to a Real Steel sequel series being ordered by Netflix, a turn of events nobody saw coming.

Recommended Videos

Shawn Levy’s robot boxing blockbuster was the very definition of solid-if-unspectacular when it first hit theaters in October 2011, earning a respectable $299 million at the box office on a $110 million production budget, while it sits right on the 60 percent Rotten Tomatoes threshold for Fresh movies, even if the 73 percent user rating is well above average.

Real Steel was added to Netflix in the fall of 2020, and it went on to spend weeks as one of the platform’s most popular titles, so much so that director Levy and star Hugh Jackman felt obligated to thank audiences around the world for revisiting what was quickly becoming a bona fide beloved favorite.

The filmmaker even admitted he wanted to get a sequel off the ground with Ryan Reynolds involved, but an episodic offshoot is a more than suitable compromise for those who fell in love with Real Steel during the first wave of COVID, whether it was for the first time or not.

Ironically, the sci-fi fantasy about a father who reluctantly takes custody of his son after trying and failing to sell him to the family of the boy’s dead bother (that’s really the plot) has been trending upwards on a rival streamer, with FlixPatrol revealing Real Steel as punching above its weight on iTunes.