‘Red Notice’ Passes ‘Bird Box’ As Netflix’s Most-Watched Movie

Going by Netflix’s own weekly top-ten list, Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot’s Red Notice notched another 129.11 million hours in its first full week of release. That’s down just 13.2% from its 148.72 million-hour “opening weekend. As of ten days of release on Netflix, the $160-$200 million action comedy as logged 277.9 million hours, just 4.12 million away from Sandra Bullock’s Bird Box which became a somewhat unexpected sensation in late 2018 and notched 282.02 million hours in its first 28 days. So, unless Red Notice, starring Johnson as an Interpol agent sparring with and then aligning with master thief Reynolds to catch rival thief Gadot, dropped dead after Sunday, and the daily Netflix top-ten lists (still the top-ranked movie since November 12) suggest otherwise, I think it’s safe to say that Red Notice is already Netflix’s most-watched original movie ever and the first to pass 300 million hours viewed.

It’s no coincidence that Netflix unveiled this deluge of ratings information just in time to be able to boast that its biggest 2021 release was about to be the biggest debut ever for an original feature. Whether it’s concrete and of value to those wheeling and dealing in terms of talent payment and creator deals, or whether it’s Netflix releasing droplets of info instead of gallons, it’s still more information than we had a week ago. Yes, these brag-worthy stats only apply to the films and shows, be they original or third-party, popular enough to make the top-ten lists in a given country, but, again, data is data. Last week’s biggest third-party movie (globally) was Central Intelligence, also directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber and also starring Dwayne Johnson. The (pretty damn good) Johnson/Kevin Hart action comedy earned $127 million domestic and $242 million global on a $50 million budget in summer 2016.

I’d expect a decent hold for Red Notice over the holiday. Fair or not, it’s an ideal “leave it on the television while the family hangs out during Thanksgiving, as it’s a star-driven spectacle that approximates a big Hollywood movie and contains little-to-no “objectionable content.” After that, it’s Sandra Bullock’s The Unforgivable (opening theatrically tomorrow and arriving on Netflix December 10) and the Oscar-friendly likes of Jane Campion’s (terrific) The Power of the Dog (December 1 following a theatrical run) and Adam McKay’s all-star political comedy Don’t Look Up (starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as scientists trying to convince the world to care about a planet-killing comet on its way to Earth). The latter opens theatrically on December 10 before launching on Netflix on December 24. Bullock’s stardom makes the “less commercial than Bird Box” The Unforgivable a wild card, but Don’t Look Up absolutely would have been a theatrical hit under normal circumstances.

Yes, $30 million of that went to DiCaprio and $25 million went to Lawrence (no conventional theatrical release means no backend bonuses), but recall that Lawrence and Chris Pratt’s Passengers earned $300 million worldwide alongside Rogue One and Sing in Christmas 2016. The sci-fi romance, for which Lawrence nabbed $20 million and Pratt earned $12 million, was seen as a last attempt to get folks to show up for an original, star-driven high-concept Hollywood biggie. It was at least long-term profitable, mostly thanks to its reported $110 million budget. Just two years ago, Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood (starring DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie) earned $375 million on a $90 million budget. Unlike The Irishman and Red Notice, which would have been madness at their respective $160 million budgets (hence why Paramount and Universal respectively cut bait), Don’t Look Up was a theatrically-friendly package at a theatrically-plausible budget.

In terms of what is watched by how many, Netflix is operating on a much higher plane, not unlike the current surge of ridiculously successful Chinese blockbusters earning $691 million-$890 million entirely in China while everything else fights to hit $400 million global. Much of the concern about releasing SVOD data is precisely because the estimated subscriber base (paying or otherwise) for Netflix (around 218 million households) and Amazon Prime (200 million) is nearly double that of the Disney+ (118 million) and well above the likes of HBO Max (73 million), Peacock (54 million) and Paramount (47 million including Showtime, BET and the like). Moreover, just because 200 million households subscribe to Amazon Prime doesn’t mean they aren’t just after the free shipping, or that a majority of any platform’s subscribers are paying consumers and/or active. I’d like to think if 73 million households watched Dune over the last month, we’d know about it.

To a certain extent, the streaming services (and their respective owners) correctly care more about paying subscriptions (in terms of new customers and month-to-month retention) than whether audiences watch a given movie or television show on their service. It’s not unlike the movie theater conundrum. The whole “a larger percentage of ticket sales allocated on a smaller portion of annual releases” variable is less of an issue for theaters. Multiplexes care more about whether audiences show up and buy popcorn than what movie they actually choose to watch. While buzzy originals and attractive third-party titles are enticements (and provide free media), at the end of the day 100 million households watching Red Notice or 100 million watching Cocomelon is of little short-term consequence as long as those folks continue to subscribe. The issue for Netflix is that their first-party offerings become addictive enough for the service to remain enticing once the third-party content ends up elsewhere.

Red Notice is a Netflix original, meant to approximate the big-budget, star-driven Hollywood biggie without relying on existing IP and without needing to spawn a sequel to qualify as a success. In the sense that audiences click on Netflix and watch “whatever’s new and looks good,” that’s not unlike the proverbial olden days when audiences looked at a newspaper and picked a movie that looked good and started soon. The only caveat, and it’s a big one, is that most of Netflix’s big movies have arisen from movie stars and filmmakers first made famous via theatrical movies. Netflix and Disney+ and Hulu have yet to create any movie stars and (save for some rom-coms) no new cinematic franchises of note. Of course, if an original star-driven action comedy like Red Notice can attract record viewership, then building or adapting singular franchises may be of minimal importance, even if Red Notice’s audience is inflated by virtue of being “the first.”