Russell Crowe's 3-Hour Historical Epic Officially Arrives on HBO Max

Russell Crowe is setting himself up for a very successful 2026. After bringing his WWII passion project Nuremberg to theaters, and earning plenty of acclaim in the process, Crowe is set to once again bring the entertainment with The Weight, a gritty Western alongside Ethan Hawke; the upcoming Netflix true-crime original, Unabomber; the fantasy epic with Game of Thrones' Rose Leslie, The Last Druid; and, perhaps most anticipated of all, the Highlander reboot alongside Henry Cavill. Crowe has already posted on social media about training to get into Gladiator shape for the latter.

The 2000s arguably marked the absolute peak of Russell Crowe's career — with hits such as Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Master and Commander, and 3:10 to Yuma, among others. But Crowe has recently found a tough time regaining traction at the box office, even with an occasional fan-favorite like The Nice Guys dotting his resume. A pair of ill-timed horror movies — The Exorcism and The Pope's Exorcist — underwhelmed at the box office, and two big-budget attempts — Kraven the Hunter and 2017's The Mummy — essentially killed their respective franchises. Outside his work as Jor-El in Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, however, Crowe's last real box office hit came in 2012 in a sweeping epic that landed on HBO Max this month.

HBO Max Brings the French Revolution

+3

Les Misérables, the musical drama directed by Tom Hooper is now available to stream on HBO Max. In 2012, Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman led an absolutely stacked cast in Hooper's adaptation of the Broadway musical, singing its way to a $442 million box office haul. The film created the trend of big musicals being released in theaters for Christmas — Into the Woods, La La Land, The Greatest Showman, and Mary Poppins Returns all followed suit. While Crowe was largely lambasted for his singing in the film, the rest of the cast — A-listers Jackman, Amanda Seyfried, and Eddie Redmayne, and Broadway vets Samantha Barks and Aaron Tveit — were all praised; the film earned a 70% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes. Anne Hathaway, who is now ruling the box office with The Odyssey, even won an Oscar for her supporting role as the tragic Fantine.