Apple TV’s Cold War action-comedy “Mayday” is doing something streaming original movies rarely manage at the same time: drawing a large audience and winning over critics.
According to analyst Ted Linhart of Ted On TV, citing Luminate viewing data, “Mayday” has reached 12.0 million viewers in 18 days. That makes it the No. 1 original movie in Apple TV history. In a separate ranking of all viewing of Apple original movies since 2025, “Mayday” already sits third — only 43% and 29% behind “The Gorge” and “Fountain of Youth,” titles that have been available for more than a year while “Mayday” has been out for less than a month.
That combination is unusual. Linhart contrasts it with Amazon’s “The Runner,” the Gal Gadot action thriller that has an 9% Rotten Tomatoes score, but still pulled 8.6 million viewers in 10 days. “Mayday,” he notes, is the rarer case: strong reviews and breakout viewing.
“Mayday” premiered globally on Apple TV on September 4, 2026. Ryan Reynolds stars as U.S. Navy Lt. Troy “Assassin” Kelly, a cocky 1987 fighter pilot sent on a covert mission over the Soviet Union. When the operation collapses, he is stranded behind enemy lines and found by Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh), a gruff ex-KGB agent with a soft spot for American pop culture — including “Top Gun.” The two form an unlikely alliance to get Kelly home.
John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (“Game Night,” “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves”) wrote and directed. Apple Studios produced with Skydance Media and Reynolds’ Maximum Effort. The supporting cast includes Maria Bakalova, Marcin Dorociński, and David Morse. Runtime is 111 minutes; the film is rated PG-13.
On Rotten Tomatoes, “Mayday” holds an 83% score from 104 reviews (average 6.3/10). The critics consensus calls it “a spirited adventure that gets a lot of mileage from clever quips and Kenneth Branagh’s extremely amusing performance.” Reviews from Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times generally describe it as a smart, infectious ’80s buddy-comedy throwback that belongs in theaters even though it launched as a streaming exclusive. Several critics singled out Branagh as the film’s secret weapon.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple has poured money into original films, with mixed results on both quality and awareness. “Mayday” is a clear win on both counts: a star-driven genre picture that actually got watched, in a window short enough that the numbers still have room to grow. Linhart’s “all viewing since 2025” comparison is the telling one — a three-week-old title already sitting just behind two of Apple’s longer-running movie hits.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple TV is available on the Apple TV app in over 100 countries and regions, on over 1 billion screens, including iPhone, iPad, Apple TV 4K, Apple Vision Pro, Mac, popular smart TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony, VIZIO, TCL and others, Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices, Chromecast with Google TV, PlayStation and Xbox gaming consoles, and at tv.apple.com, for $14.99 per month with a seven-day free trial for new subscribers. For a limited time, customers who purchase and activate a new iPhone, iPad, Apple TV 4K or Mac can enjoy three months of Apple TV for free.
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.