The Cloverfield Paradox brought in 2.8 million views in first three days

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX may have been the most-talked-about thing on Super Bowl Sunday other than football, but just because people were talking about the movie doesn’t mean they were going to watch it. Despite a shocking and awesome release, the movie’s viewer numbers come in vastly lower than another big-budget Netflix film – BRIGHT.

According to the released Nielsen stats (per Variety), PARADOX notched about 2.8 million views in the first three days of release, a number which then grew to five million over the first seven days. That’s a far cry from the Nielsen numbers for David Ayer’s BRIGHT, which took in 11 million views in its first three days to become Netflix’s most-watched original movie ever. Though Netflix didn't pay close to $100 million to make the movie like they did BRIGHT, they did buy it from Paramount for about $50 million, which is no chump change. 

There are a number of reasons why PARADOX failed to gain the kind of viewers that BRIGHT did. One, the movie – more so than BRIGHT – was destroyed by critics, and currently has an 18% “rotten” score on Rotten Tomatoes. As well, though as bold and surprising it was for Netflix to announce the movie and drop it on the same day, this gave the movie no time to be advertised to people. Millions may have been watching the game, but that still isn’t enough to generate the kind of interest months of promotion does.

Also, PARADOX may have had an excellent line-up of talented actors like Daniel Bruhl, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Chris O'Dowd, but none of them are exactly “names.” BRIGHT had the benefit of starring Will Smith, arguably one of the biggest movie stars ever to walk the planet. However, to PARADOX's defense, the movie debuted on Sunday, which means it's three days includes Monday and Tuesday, which could have diminished initial views compared to a Friday release. 

All in all, I think the mix of bad reviews with the lack of promotion put many people into a certain situation: They were presented with a  movie they had no idea existed or had any knowledge about, only to discover it sucked. Doesn’t exactly inspire a lot of clicks on the “Play” button. Hey, this release was a gamble that got people talking, and for that, it can be seen as a marginal success. What sucks is that it could've been a huge success had the movie been, you know, good.