In 18 Days, Red Notice Shatters Netflix Record

Less than a month out from its debut, half of Netflix's subscribers have watched Red Notice. The film, starring Dwaye 'The Rock' Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot, quickly shattered the record of most-watched movie on the streaming service, with 328.8 million viewing hours accumulated in just 18 days, CNN reports. The previous record holder, Sandra Bullock's Bird Box, racked up 282 million viewing hours in its first 28 days in 2018. Red Notice, about an FBI profiler and an art thief who team up to catch a criminal, also debuted in theaters last weekend.

At the Verge, though, Catie Keck writes that the numbers don't tell the whole story. Netflix has experienced massive growth in the three years since Bird Box. "That means that any film that the streamer puts on its service now is better positioned to do well over titles that premiered when it had some 75 million fewer active accounts, fewer features, and the world wasn’t living through an ongoing global health crisis that sees many of us turning to streaming services to keep us preoccupied," Keck writes. Plus, the movie seems unlikely to achieve the "cultural cachet" of Bird Box (or, for that matter, of Netflix's most popular series debut, Squid Game).