Ryan Reynolds' 'Mayday' Slides From No. 1 on Apple TV After Strong Run

Ryan Reynolds' latest streaming venture, the Cold War action-comedy Mayday, has completed its dominant run at the top of Apple TV's charts — a natural transition for any title after its initial surge of viewer curiosity subsides. According to ScreenRant, the film now sits at No. 3 in the United States as of October 5, roughly five weeks after its September 4 premiere on the platform.

A Chart Descent That Tells Only Part of the Story

Dropping from the top spot on a major streaming platform is hardly a death knell in the modern content landscape — it is, more accurately, the expected arc of any release that generates genuine early buzz. Mayday held its own for a meaningful stretch, and its current position above titles like Good Will Hunting, Ridley Scott's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and the racing drama F1 suggests there remains a steady audience still discovering it. For context, the film now ranks below The Last First: Winter K2, a mountaineering documentary that premiered at Sundance and landed on Apple TV on October 2, and the perennial seasonal favorite It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

What 'Mayday' Actually Offers

For those who haven't yet caught up with it, Mayday casts Reynolds as a U.S. Navy pilot drawn into a top-secret mission during the Cold War who finds himself stranded behind enemy lines and reluctantly paired with an eccentric former KGB agent played by Kenneth Branagh. The film was written and directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, the duo previously responsible for Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves — filmmakers with a demonstrated knack for threading genre mechanics through a comedic sensibility without letting either element overwhelm the other.

The supporting cast is genuinely impressive in its range: Oscar nominee Maria Bakalova (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), alongside David Morse, Marcin Dorociński, Clark Johnson, Wendy Crewson, and others. Reynolds brought the film to New York for its premiere with considerable fanfare, and the reception has largely validated the promotional enthusiasm. The film carries an 83% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers particularly singling out Branagh's comedic work as a highlight, and a 68% audience score — numbers that point to a film doing exactly what it sets out to do without overreaching.

Reynolds in the Streaming Era

The chart movement is also a useful moment to consider where Mayday fits within Reynolds' broader evolution as a screen presence. He spent much of the 2000s and early 2010s working through a wide tonal range — from ensemble comedies to superhero properties that, in the case of Green Lantern, didn't quite land — before the Deadpool franchise transformed him into one of Hollywood's most bankable stars. That wisecracking antihero energy, refined across three films including last year's Deadpool & Wolverine, has clearly informed his streaming output, where he has made headlines both on and off screen with consistent frequency.

Streaming films like 6 Underground, Red Notice, and The Adam Project established a template: high-concept premises, Reynolds' dependable comic timing, and enough action to justify the scale. Mayday slots comfortably into that lineage while benefiting from the Daley-Goldstein chemistry and Branagh's scene-stealing instincts.

What Displaced It at the Top

The Last First: Winter K2, directed by Amir Bar-Lev, is the new Apple TV chart-topper. The documentary chronicles a 2021 expedition to achieve the first successful winter ascent of K2 — a feat of staggering difficulty — and it arrives bearing a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score. Critics have described it as emotionally powerful and cinematically rigorous, the kind of nonfiction filmmaking that reminds audiences why the documentary form can be as gripping as any thriller.

Mayday slipping to make room for a film of that caliber is no embarrassment. It remains a well-reviewed, confidently made streaming feature that rewards the time invested.