Bill Murray’s R-Rated $85M Comedy That Helped Launch The Ghostbusters Franchise Is About To Leave Netflix

Bill Murray has some of the best R-rated comedies of the '80s, but one of them is about to leave Netflix.

Conceived and directed by Ivan Reitman, Stripes starred Murray as ne'er-do-well cab driver John Winger who, wanting a change in life, elects to enlist in the army, convincing his best friend, Harold Ramis' Russell Ziskey, to join him. As the pair arrive at basic training, they befriend a fellow group of ragtag trainees and find themselves becoming an underdog group on a major mission.

Now, a little under 45 years after the film hit theaters, Stripes is about to leave Netflix. The military comedy, which has also been available to stream on YouTube TV, is set to depart the platform on March 1. At the time of writing, no new platform has been announced for Murray's film after its Netflix exit.

Alongside Murray and Ramis, Stripes featured a star-studded roster of present and future comedy icons, including Warren Oates in one of his final roles, John Candy in his first American hit after The Blues Brothers, P.J. Soles, John Larroquette, Sean Young, Judge Reinhold, John Diehl and Conrad Dunn, among others. Hitting theaters in June 1981, the film was a critical and commercial hit, grossing over $85 million against its $10 million production budget, while also maintaining a "Certified Fresh" rating of 88% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

Though undeniably one of the biggest stars of its decade, Stripes was part of a major cementing of Murray as a bankable star. Fresh off his success with his Saturday Night Live tenure, the summer camp comedy Meatballs, also helmed by Reitman, and the sports comedy classic Caddyshack, the R-rated comedy became his highest-grossing movie at the time.

More notably, it also quietly served as part of the foundation for the launch of the Ghostbusters franchise. Dan Aykroyd memorably wrote the supernatural comedy classic with the hopes of starring alongside fellow SNL vets Eddie Murphy and John Belushi, only for the latter's death to see him turn to Murray instead. He subsequently then brought the script to Reitman thanks to his success with both Animal House and Stripes, with the director/producer further being the one to bring Harold Ramis in as a co-writer and star.

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As is well-known now, Ghostbusters overtook Stripes to become Murray's highest-grossing film at the time, where it stayed until Jon Favreau's Jungle Book remake grossed nearly $1 billion and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania took second place with over $476 million. Even still, the military comedy holds an impressive top 15 spot for Murray on Rotten Tomatoes, situated between his meta cameo in the first Zombieland and one of his acclaimed dramatic turns with 2005's Broken Flowers.

With the movie also serving as Murray and Ramis' first acting collaboration, after the former co-wrote Meatballs, Stripes remains a unique entry into both of their filmographies that makes its upcoming Netflix departure a disappointment for fans of the pair. Given studio Columbia Pictures, and therefore Sony, has streaming partnerships beyond Netflix, ranging from Peacock to Disney+, it could very well find a new home anywhere in the coming weeks.

Release Date June 25, 1981

Runtime 106 minutes