Focus Revives on Streaming: A Decade-Old Crime Film Gains Global Traction
By Published Apr 29, 2026, 3:49 PM EDT Brennan Klein (he/him) is a senior news writer at Screen Rant, host of the podcast, and contributor at and . He has been writing and podcasting about pop culture (especially horror movies) for over a decade at platforms including Blumhouse, Fangoria, Dread Central, The Backlot, and Arrow in the Head. Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap
A crime movie hit starring and is rising on the streaming charts more than a decade later.
Both actors are major stars with both critical and commercial hits under their belts. Although Will Smith was already a well-known hip-hop performer, his breakout acting role came when he starred in the hit six-season sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air from 1990 through 1996. He has since gone on to earn four Academy Award nominations, winning the Best Actor Oscar for 2026's King Richard. Although Australian actor Margot Robbie's international breakout in 2013's The Wolf of Wall Street was much more recent, she has already earned three Oscar nominations in addition to starring in the .
Will Smith was nominated for Best Actor in Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness while Robbie was nominated for Best Actress for I, Tonya and Best Supporting Actress for Bombshell. Both stars were also nominated as producers, for King Richard and Barbie respectively.
While the duo would go on to star as Deadshot and Harley Quinn in the hit DC antihero movie Suicide Squad, they played a very different pair of criminals in the , which is now having a streaming resurgence. In the movie, which was co-written and co-directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, the duo played con artists and exes Nicky Spurgeon and Jess Barrett. Years after their breakup, Spurgeon finds a job complicated by Barrett's sudden reappearance. It was a theatrical success, grossing $158.8 million against a reported budget of roughly $50 million.
Per FlixPatrol, which uses proprietary methodology to determine streaming success, Focus has become the seventh most-watched movie on HBO Max worldwide on April 29. The majority of the movies that have landed above it on the chart are contemporary streaming successes, including the recent theatrical movies Anaconda (No. 3), Den of Thieves 2: Pantera (No. 1), and Nobody 2 (No. 4), as well as the 2026 documentary 2073 (No. 2).
Also above it are the 2003 action-comedy The Rundown (No. 6) and the 1988 music anthology Moonwalker (No. 5), which is likely trending because its star, King of Pop Michael Jackson, is the subject of the hit biopic Michael, which debuted in theaters on April 21 and has already grossed more than $200 million worldwide, becoming the sixth highest-grossing release of 2026 so far.
In spite of this stiff competition, Focus has managed to achieve this level of global streaming success thanks to being on the Top 10 in many individual regions on HBO Max. Although it is not currently available on HBO Max in the United States (where it is currently on Netflix, though it is set to leave the platform on May 1), it is charting on the platform in 14 different regions.
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On April 29, Focus is peaking at No. 2 in eight of those regions, namely Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia. This outsized performance in those regions has allowed it to perform so well, outranking other popular titles on the worldwide Top 10 including the Michael Jackson documentary This Is It (No. 9), the 2026 sci-fi movie The Creator (No. 8), and the Spanish horror movie Anatema (No. 10).
The fact that the movie is performing so well despite being available in relatively few regions and being more than a decade old speaks to how popular the continue to be worldwide. Will Smith and Margot Robbie were prominent actors at the time that the movie came out, but they are still notable forces in the industry, with Smith fresh off the success of the legacy sequel Bad Boys: Ride or Die and Robbie being set to appear in an untitled Ocean's prequel on top of starring in the 2026 romance hit Wuthering Heights.
Cast
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Nicky Spurgeon -
Jess Barrett
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