Zachary Levi’s Post-DC Movie Era Continues Strong Audience Rotten Tomatoes Streak With New Movie

Sarah’s Oil is performing well with audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. The historical drama, which is set in the early 1900s, follows young Black girl Sarah Rector (Naya Desir-Johnson) being given a parcel of oil-rich land that she defends from a variety of ruthless interested parties, with the help of a kind-hearted Texas wildcatter named Bert Smith (Zachery Levi).

Levi is known for having starred in a variety of superhero movies, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok as well as the DC Extended Universe movies Shazam! and Shazam! Fury of the Gods.

Although Sarah’s Oil still does not have enough critics’ reviews for it to earn an official Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes, more than 100 user reviews have earned it a solid 97% audience score on the Popcornmeter. While the score could fluctuate as more reviews are added, it is high enough that even if it lowers by 5 points or more, it could still become Verified Hot once it hits a high-enough review threshold.

In addition to the Popcornmeter being near-perfect, many of the movie’s individual scores from users are strong. The majority of the scores it has earned give it either four and a half or five stars out of five. Many of these reviews point out the acting as a highlight in Sarah’s Oil, and it received frequent praise for being heartwarming and educational.

This high audience score continues a solid Rotten Tomatoes streak for Levi since the end of his tenure in the DCEU with 2023’s Shazam! Fury of the Gods. So far, he has starred in five movies since then, which have largely received Rotten scores, namely Spy Kids: Armageddon (54%), Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (83%), Harold and the Purple Crayon (27%), The Unbreakable Boy (43%), and Sarah’s Oil (N/A).

In spite of the star having a tough time winning over critics, he is in the middle of a streak of Verified Hot scores on the Popcornmeter that kicked off with 2024’s Harold and the Purple Crayon (89%). The Unbreakable Boy followed that with an even better 97%, matching the current score of Sarah’s Oil, which could become Verified Hot before long.

While this seems to show that audiences and critics are consistently divided on new Zachary Levi movies, in order for a user review to be verified on Rotten Tomatoes, the user needs to have purchased a ticket to see the movie in theaters via Fandango, the company that owns Rotten Tomatoes.

All three of his newest movies have had lukewarm performances at the box office, with Harold outright bombing, grossing $32.2 million against its reported $40 million budget. Afterward, The Unbreakable Boy earned just $7.2 million. Now, Sarah’s Oil is being projected to open at No. 4 with a mild $4.4 million debut.

While Sarah’s Oil was probably not a movie with a large budget, so it could become a box office success on its own terms, the fact that all three of Levi’s recent movies had small audiences could also mean that those are self-selecting groups who chose to see the movies largely because they had elements that strongly appealed to them, making them predisposed to give them overwhelmingly positive scores.