'Bird Box' Racks up 80 Million Views on Netflix

Netflix film Bird Box’s 45 million seven-day viewing record is not done growing, the streaming [...]

Netflix film Bird Box's 45 million seven-day viewing record is not done growing, the streaming giant recently revealing that the Sandra Bullock-led film has been viewed several million times more within the first month of its release.

Debuting over the holiday season, the sci-fi Netflix original film has reportedly been streamed by some 80 million accounts within the first four weeks of its release and helped push global subscribers to more than 139 million, up almost 9 million new subscribers.

"We are beginning to have our original movie offering mirror the success of our series offering for consumer enjoyment," the company said in a statement, Sky News reports. "As a result of our success with original content, we're becoming less focused on 2nd run programming."

Although relatively secret when it comes to their viewing measures, the streaming giant has begun to more openly give fans a glimpse into the data surrounding some of the most popular Netflix originals. Shortly after Bird Box's debut on Netflix, the streaming service revealed that it had been viewed more than 45 million times within its first week, making it the best first seven days for a Netflix film.

That record title was later supported by Neilsen ratings, which reveal that 26 million users watched the film in its first week of release.

Netflix has also revealed viewing numbers for other hits like Sex Education (40 million), Elite (20 million), and You (40 million), though those numbers have come under scrutiny from fans and critics alike given that Netflix has kept mum about its metrics.

"So Netflix is just revealing the numbers of viewers when it suits them, but don't tell us for how long or for how many episodes," one person commented following Netflix's statement that You had been viewed millions of times. "They've done this with Elite and Sex Education. Impressive figures, but unless they say how many people watched all of the episodes (or for each episode), I'm pretty unconvinced that it nothing more than just easy PR."

"Hey, you know what sucks? Throwing out these numbers and refusing to release any hard data to support it," another person tweeted.

In a rare move following the release of Bird Box's numbers, Netflix did give a little insight into its data, revealing that a view only counts once an account has watched at least 70 percent of the film's runtime, including the credits. They also stated that any subsequent views of the film from the same account do not count. The statement added that the information "should not be taken as a metric for all Netflix content."

Bird Box is currently available for streaming on Netflix.

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