Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
While Netflix tends to keep its ratings under wraps, Nielsen has revealed just how many people streamed the service’s latest talked-about sci-fi flick The Cloverfield Paradox. All that talk, of course, centered around the fact that the world didn’t even know another Cloverfield was on the way until Netflix announced it during the Super Bowl, revealing it would be available to stream once the big game wrapped.
So how many people actually switched off NBC and turned on Netflix? According to Nielsen, around 784, 579. While that doesn’t sound like a lot, remember this: Nielsen only counts views on actual TV and does not take into account people who watch Netflix on laptops, mobile phones, or tablets. That chunk, nearly 800,000 viewers, is only a partial number.
Nielsen’s report goes even further than that, though. On its second day of release (Monday, Feb. 5), The Cloverfield Paradox was watched by an average of 1.3 million viewers in the U.S. Its 3-day total was an average of 2.8 million viewers, and its 7-day total was 5 million average viewers–again, that number only includes those that watched the film on a TV.
To get more of a sense of how The Cloverfield Paradox fared, you can compare it to Netflix’s new sci-fi series Altered Carbon, which Nielsen also analyzed. In its first three days of availability, it grabbed an average audience of 1.24 million. That number jumped to 2.49 million in its first 7 days.
If you compare The Cloverfield Paradox’s 3-day ratings with Netflix’s last big sci-fi flick Bright, the numbers don’t look so hot; the Will Smith fantasy/cop film was watched by 11 million people in its first 3 days, almost 4 times as many as The Cloverfield Paradox.
This might be comparing J.J. Abrams-apples to orc-oranges. Bright had months of hype around it, not to mention a legit movie star like Will Smith in the lead. People knew it was coming. The Cloverfield Paradox was only advertised to people watching the Super Bowl (a low-rated Super Bowl, to boot), and doesn’t possess near as much of the star power (it doesn’t even have Daniel Bruhl’s captivating beard!). The fact that 5 million people watched the show in a week is definitely notable; the average cost of a movie ticket is $8.84, meaning the movie kinda “made” $44.2 million in its first week. Again, apples to oranges as having a Netflix subscription doesn’t compare to going out and buying a movie ticket. My point is, though, do you think a sci-fi thriller with bad reviews would have made even close to $44 million in its opening weekend in a theater? Or in its entire run? At the very least, it’s definitely possible that The Cloverfield Paradox was watched by way more people on Netflix than it would have had it been released in theaters. So while it wasn’t as big as Bright, you can see how Netflix might consider The Cloverfield Paradox a win.
