[renton_wal]

> more people saw this movie than any Star Wars movie is baffling

Is it? It's much easier than going to the movies. You could literally watch it on the toilet.

I can imagine that if, for $20, you were magically and instantly transported to a personal showing (in which you didnt have to wear pants and your cat was there), movie theaters would have a lot more users.

A better number might be star wars theater+home video, but even then that'll be depressed because it's not "free" with a subscription.

[slg]

Ok, for a more apples to apples comparison, let's look at the Wonder Women movies.

The first one opens to $103m[1] which equates to 11.5m viewers. The new one was released simultaneously both in theaters and streaming. It had an opening of $17m or 1.8m viewers plus 38m hours streaming and roughly 14.9m viewings. Let's subtract the sequel's theatrical run from both totals and we have 9.7m theatrical vs 14.9m streaming which equates to a theatrical performance being 65% of the streaming performance (assuming they should both have similar openings which is another arbitrary assumption done to simplify everything and because there are multiple factors pushing in opposite directions).

Let's dock the previous Red Notice numbers of that 35% inflation and that gives us 50m streams. That would knock it out of the number 2 spot, but it would likely still be top 10. Once again, this is an original movie and no non-franchise movie is in the top 50 biggest openings. I still don't buy these numbers.

[1] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl578455041/

[2] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt7126948/

[3] - https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/wonder-woman-1984-hbo-...

[renton_wal]

> both in theaters and streaming

Yeah, but that was on HBO max. That had, at the time, less than 1/5 the users of netflix. Wonder Woman was clearly a marquee title designed to get signups, but that strategy is always risky and not super effective as a one-off - registration funnels are very hard. So, it's not as much a 1:1 comparison as you thought it was.

14.9 wonder woman streams * 5 increased audience = 74 mil. That puts it well within the realm of netflix' numbers. I mean obv that's not perfect because not everyone wants to watch it.

Also, using wonder woman as an example isn't great, because the general buzz on its release was that frankly, it wasn't a good movie. Critical and audience reviews suggest it's a markedly "less popular" movie than red notice.

The numbers are well within the realm of possibility. Although, I wouldn't be surprised to find out netflix is being very favorable to themselves - in fact, I'd expect it.

[slg]

>Yeah, but that was on HBO max. That had, at the time, less than 1/5 the users of netflix. Wonder Woman was clearly a marquee title designed to get signups, but that strategy is always risky and not super effective as a one-off - registration funnels are very hard. So, it's not as much a 1:1 comparison as you thought it was.

>14.9 wonder woman streams * 5 increased audience = 74 mil. That puts it well within the realm of netflix' numbers. I mean obv that's not perfect because not everyone wants to watch it.

WW84 was the biggest HBO Max exclusive to date. People did signup to watch that movie and therefore their subscribers were a self selected group who are not a representative sample that we can just multiple by 5. Also we already factored in the theatrical release which provided the opportunity for non-HBO subscribers to see it. And to be clear, I wasn't directly comparing WW84 viewer numbers to Red Notice. I was comparing WW to WW84 numbers so the difference in size between Netflix and HBO Max is less of a factor.

>Also, using wonder woman as an example isn't great, because the general buzz on its release was that frankly, it wasn't a good movie. Critical and audience reviews suggest it's a markedly "less popular" movie than red notice.

But it was also a sequel to a beloved movie and an iconic character. Plus the original had a lot of word of mouth success that caused people to predict that WW84 would open bigger. It was one of the most anticipated movies of the year.

Also you are just flat wrong when you say Red Notice received better critical reviews. Both Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes have WW84 with mediocre scores and Red Notice with awful scores.

>The numbers are well within the realm of possibility. Although, I wouldn't be surprised to find out netflix is being very favorable to themselves - in fact, I'd expect it.

So it sounds like we agree that Netflix is probably bending the truth with these numbers in the same mold of how Facebook was lying about the number of people who watched their videos.[1]

[1] - https://fortune.com/2019/10/07/facebook-lawsuit-settlement-i...

[renton_wal]

> WW84 was the biggest HBO Max exclusive to date.

im not sure that's a comment in your favor ;) ww84 was pretty bad. i imagine it drove some signups, but not as many as hbo would have hoped for

> People did signup to watch that movie and therefore their subscribers were a self selected group who are not a representative sample that we can just multiple by 5.

Yeah, my bad. It's actually * 12.

"HBO Max accounts jump to 17.2 million"

At the time, netflix had 208 mil. So, it gets even more believable that netflix is accurately representing their numbers - their audience is so much larger than competitive streaming services, that they can in fact drive record breaking traffic.

[slg]

>im not sure that's a comment in your favor ;) ww84 was pretty bad. i imagine it drove some signups, but not as many as hbo would have hoped for

Once again, I will point out it received a better critical response than Red Notice did despite you saying otherwise.

>Yeah, my bad. It's actually * 12...

You are comparing a domestic total for HBO Max to a global total for Netflix not to mention you ignored the rest of my comment explaining why this comparison isn't as important as you think.

[Lewton]

Most of your incredulity seems to be rooted in Red Notice (probably) not being a good movie. But I really don't think that factors into Netflix viewership as much as you'd like. Netflix is treated more as "friday night tv", than "going to the cinema" and people are much more willing to sit through crap on Netflix than you seem willing to accept