David Ayer's New Movie Desperately Needs To Break A Bad 10-Year Streak

Introduction to The Beekeeper

David Ayer's new movie The Beekeeper arrives in 2024, and it desperately needs to break a 10-year streak for the director when the time comes. The ninth movie from the filmmaker is an action revenge thriller starring Jason Statham, marking the first collaboration between them. The Beekeeper's release comes four years after Ayer's last movie and features a rather talented cast around Statham, including Josh Hutcherson, Jeremy Irons, Minnie Driver, and Emmy Raver-Lampman. Considering the promise that David Ayer's movies showed early in his career, The Beekeeper arrives at a pivotal moment.

Introduction to The Beekeeper

David Ayer's Career Trajectory

Thanks to his screenplays for Training Day and The Fast and the Furious, David Ayer experienced great success in 2001 when both movies were released. This propelled him to start directing within a few years afterward, leading to his breakout third effort, End of Watch. However, his career trajectory has taken a turn over the last decade. He went from making gritty dramas to big-budget tentpoles, only to return to lower-budget stories. David Ayer is now re-establishing his place in Hollywood after some disastrous productions led to bad reviews for his movies, which adds some pressure to The Beekeeper to break the trend.

David Ayer's Movie Reviews and Declining Success

The quality of David Ayer's movies has fluctuated over the years just as is the case for most filmmakers, but Fury's release in 2014 currently stands out. The war drama starring Brad Pitt and Logan Lerman marked the last time that a movie he directed earned good reviews. Fury received a 76% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes two years after End of Watch easily set a new career high for the director at 85%. Unfortunately for David Ayer, all his movies have received overwhelmingly bad reviews from that point on. To make matters worse, the reviews are getting worse with each new release.

David Ayer's Fury follow-up was Suicide Squad, which was not met with kindness after studio interference led to massive reshoots and a new cut of the movie. The DC anti-hero movie wound up with a 26% rating on Rotten Tomatoes as a result. It has since spawned calls for the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad to be released to see his original intentions. Ayer once again received bad reviews for Netflix's Bright in 2017. It also has a 26% rating, but the average score for reviews is much lower. David Ayer's bad review streak continued in 2020 with The Tax Collector (18% on Rotten Tomatoes) furthering the decline after Fury.

Jason Statham conversing intensely in The Beekeeper

There is no question that David Ayer is hoping The Beekeeper can break this poor 10-year career trend, but it is not set up for that type of success it seems. The movie has an early January 2024 release date, which is typically when studios dump movies they know are bad. Furthermore, The Beekeeper's trailer does not exactly inspire confidence. It looks like the type of action movie Jason Statham is known for at this point, and the star is on his own poor Rotten Tomatoes streak at the moment too. But, maybe The Beekeeper will surprise and break David Ayer's review trend in the process.