Bull Hits No. 1 on HBO Max, Just Not in America

Bull, a British revenge thriller from 2021, jumped 41 spots to No. 1 on HBO Max’s worldwide movie chart on September 1 and 2. American subscribers could not press play on it. The title is not licensed to Max in the United States, where Bob Odenkirk’s Normal still sat at the top of the same service.

Tracker FlixPatrol logged the surge. A film that took in $17,704 in cinemas now outranked Superman, Despicable Me 4, and Ready Player One on Max’s world list, then hid in plain sight on Prime Video, Tubi, and Pluto TV for anyone watching from the States.

Bull Hit No. 1 Worldwide While Normal Led in the US

On the HBO Max global movie chart for September 2, Bull scored 201 FlixPatrol points. Guy Pearce’s Killing Faith held second with 180, a 21-point gap after two days of Bull in first. The rest of the world ten mixed a newish thriller, a Minions sequel, two Halloween films, a 2008 wedding drama, and a pile of Warner catalog.

THE WORLD LIST ON SEPTEMBER 2

The United States chart on the same day did not include Bull at all. Normal, the 91-minute Derek Kolstad thriller that arrived on Max on August 14, held No. 1 for a 17th day, ahead of Practical Magic, The Drama, Green Lantern, and Mother Mary.

On August 31, Killing Faith still led the world movie list with 195 points. Bull was not in that top ten. By September 1 it had become the global No. 1, which is the 41-place leap the chart story turned on.

$17,704 on 30 Screens, Then the World Chart

Signature Entertainment opened the film in the United Kingdom on November 5, 2021, on 30 screens. The first weekend took in $7,628. The Numbers puts the worldwide box office of $17,704, almost all of it from Britain, plus $280 in New Zealand a year later. Saban Films took North America at the 2021 American Film Market and gave it a limited US opening on April 1, 2022. There is no meaningful domestic theatrical gross on the ledger.

That cinema run is the joke the ranking now tells. Max did not spend like a studio to put this title over. It dropped an 88-minute British gangland film into Latin American catalogs and watched the world list flip.

THE RELEASE CALENDAR

1. August 6, 2021: Holds its world premiere in Montreal at Fantasia.
2. October 16, 2021: Screens at the BFI London Film Festival after a Signature Entertainment UK premiere announcement.
3. November 5, 2021: Opens in British cinemas on 30 screens.
4. April 1, 2022: Saban Films gives it a limited North American theatrical date, then a digital release on April 5.
5. September 1, 2026: Reaches No. 1 on HBO Max’s worldwide movie ranking and holds it on September 2.

Paul Andrew Williams wrote and directed. He won Edinburgh’s New Director’s Award in 2006 for London to Brighton and later a BAFTA for the BBC film Murdered for Being Different. Giant Productions launched around this shoot. Raffertie scored it. The MPAA rated it R for strong violence, language throughout, and some drug material.

What the Movie Bull Is About

Neil Maskell plays the title role, a Kent enforcer who worked for his father-in-law, Norm, until the crew burned him alive in a caravan and took his son. Ten years later he walks back into their lives. The official synopsis gives him one line of warning: “I’m coming for all of them.”

The plot cuts present-day killings against that older betrayal. Bull murders in houses, on a street, and on a carnival ride. He smothers his tortured mother to end her pain. He cuts a heroin dealer’s hand off on a stove to find his ex-wife Gemma. David Hayman plays Norm. Lois Brabin-Platt plays Gemma. Tamzin Outhwaite, Kevin Harvey, David Nellist, and Henri Charles fill the family and the crew.

The last movement is the part most write-ups sand off. Bull’s eyes are black. A vicar recoils when he carries his strung-out son into a church. The film implies he died in that field and came back to finish the list, then returns to the ground where they buried him. That is why people reach for The Crow when they try to pitch it, and for Guy Ritchie when they talk about the gangster texture. It is also why some viewers who came for a straight revenge picture feel cheated at the hour-and-a-half mark.

Latin America Is Running a Different Max Catalog

FlixPatrol’s HBO Max listings across Latin America explain the world ranking. The title streams on Max in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and a run of smaller markets from the Bahamas to Venezuela. It does not stream on Max in the United States.

On September 2, Bull was the top Max movie in Mexico, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Guatemala. Over September 1 and 2 it finished in the top two in 20 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean. Mexico’s board showed a one-place rise and a two-day stay, with Halloween Ends and Halloween Kills stacked under it.

WHERE BULL LED ON MAX

• Mexico: No. 1 on September 2, up one place, two days on the board.
• Andean markets: No. 1 in Bolivia, Chile, and Ecuador the same day.
• Central America: No. 1 in Costa Rica and Guatemala.
• Caribbean: No. 1 in the Dominican Republic, with further top-two finishes across the region.
• United States: Absent from the Max movie ten, which Normal still headed.

Warner’s Latin catalogs and Saban’s US rights are not the same pile of films. A world No. 1 on Max can be a movie a US login will not resolve. Killing Faith, Despicable Me 4, and the Halloween sequels could travel with Bull on those boards because they were actually on the same app in those countries. Normal, Practical Magic, and Mother Mary were the American night’s entertainment instead.

Black Eyes, a Funfair, and Kill List DNA

Maskell is the reason the film has a cult at all. He was the blank, terrifying father in Ben Wheatley’s Kill List and the conspiracist in Utopia. Bull asks him to play a man who is already past ordinary human limits, then withholds the explanation until the church. The violence is knives, fire, and a femoral artery on a carnival ride, not gun-fu. Runtime is 88 minutes, short enough that the ranking looks like a complete sitting rather than a half-watched prestige title.

People who find it now still file it beside Nobody, because a one-man cleanup is the easy shelf. A still of Maskell in the role circulated in late August from viewers who had it on Prime Video and were correcting that mix-up in public. The better comparison inside British crime is Dead Man’s Shoes plus a ghost story the script refuses to name until the last scene.

Williams has been making tight, nasty British pictures for two decades, from The Cottage and Cherry Tree Lane through television including Broadchurch. Bull was never a secret among that audience. It was a secret to the Max world ranking until a Latin American window opened under it.

Critics Logged the Charge in 2021

Rotten Tomatoes has the film at 93%. The critics consensus on the film reads as a warning label more than a rave.

Bull isn’t for the faint of heart, but this down and dirty revenge thriller packs a charge for fans of old-school crime dramas.

Critics Consensus, Rotten Tomatoes

Metacritic scored it 72 out of 100 from nine critics. Ian Freer, writing when it opened, said Williams and Maskell “breathe new life into a familiar one-man-army scenario.” Noel Murray called it a must for fans of pulpy crime pictures. Randy Myers described “a lean, mean ride that wallops you with surprising emotional force at the end.” Peter Bradshaw was cooler, finding flashes rather than a full grip.

IMDb users are less sold: 6.5 from about 11,000 ratings. That gap matches the argument in the replies the film still draws. The craft and Maskell hold. The resurrection beat, the black eyes, the vicar, is either the point or a trick bolted onto a gangster picture that had already done its work. Audience notes on the Tomatoes page still split on exactly that ending, including viewers who only reached it on Prime in 2026.

Prime Video, Tubi, and Pluto Already Carry It

US Max users who saw the world ranking and searched the app hit a blank. The same weekend, the film was sitting on services that do not require a Max login.

WHERE AMERICANS CAN WATCH IT

• Prime Video: Included with a subscription in the United States, matching the UK Prime listing.
• Tubi: Free with ads, the widest no-cost door.
• Pluto TV: Also free with ads, alongside library apps such as Kanopy, Hoopla, and Plex.

In Britain it also sits on Shudder and Channel 4 Plus. That does not change the Max board. For two days in September the streamer’s worldwide movie No. 1 was an 88-minute Kent revenge picture that cinema ignored, critics logged years ago, and US Max still does not carry.

The ranking will move. Killing Faith is already close on points, and the US service is on a different title entirely. Bull’s two days at the top were a map of who can press play, not a sudden Hollywood conversion.