Netflix’s film, Bird Box, which was released on December 21st, had been watched by 45,037,125 Netflix accounts by the 7th day of its premiere, according to the network.
The film stars Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich, Vivien Lyra Blair, Julian Edwards, and Sarah Paulson. It follows Malorie (Bullock) and her children (Blair and Edwards) five years after an ominous unseen presence drives most of society to suicide. The story starts out with Malorie and her children making a journey on a boat down a river. As a whole, the film is mostly flashbacks showing the timeline leading up to that moment.
Bird Box has become the biggest seven-day viewership of all the streamer’s original movie releases to date. The film, as well as Sandra Bullock, has inspired many internet memes since its release. You can check out a few below.
Netflix isn’t known for releasing viewing data in any regular way and the 45 million number cannot be independently verified. According to Variety, A Netflix spokeswoman said the 45 million accounts it tallied as having watched Bird Box were counted only after a view surpassed 70% of the total running time including credits. In other words, those accounts had viewed at least 87 minutes of the 124 minute movie. Each Netflix account may have included multiple views (and viewers) of the film, but were counted only once toward to the 45 million total. According to the rep, this info applies to Bird Box specifically and “should not be taken as a metric for all Netflix content.”
Still, with this data, it is a pretty spectacular thing. It would mean that about 1/3 of the Netflix’s subscribers/viewers have seen (or partially seen) the film.
Bird Box is directed by Susanne Bier and based on Josh Malerman’s 2014 novel of the same name.