Netflix claimed that their popular “Bird Box” movie starring America’s sweetheart Sandra Bullock (age 54) and Trevante Rhodes (age 28), was watched by 45 million Netflix accounts on the first week since its release on December 13, 2018.
There was really no data backing that claim of Netflix because they are very secretive of their analytics. But now, Nielsen, the global information and measurement company, provided data on how many people have watched the “Bird Box” movie.
Bird Box (2018) starring Sandra Bullock, Sarah Paulson, John Malkovich.
According to Nielsen’s measurement, almost 26 million US viewers have watched the “Bird Box” movie over the first seven days of its release. Yes, this is just the number for the US. There are no reports yet as to the number of people outside of US who have watched the hit Netflix film.
Also, in the over 26 million viewers, the numbers for mobile, tablet and laptop viewers are not counted yet. And that’s the reason why the “45 million Netflix accounts” announced by Netflix is higher than that of Nielsen’s data.
‘Bird Box’ starring Sandra Bullock gains highest viewership in a week for a Netflix movie.
How does Nielsen measure the viewers? They measure Netflix and other streaming data the same way they measure TV broadcasts. That is through sampling the viewing habits of their panel of 48,000 homes and over 118,000 people.
Still part of Nielsen’s data, the top 1 in debut week viewership is “Stranger Things” Season 2 in October 2017, while “Bird Box” came in second. Nielsen is able to present these numbers because they have been tracking streaming viewership from different streaming services for almost a year now. Netflix did not give any comment about the numbers given by Nielsen.
After its release, the “Bird Box” movie stayed consistent in attracting an average of 4 million US viewers in its first 10 days. According to Nielsen, the eigth day since the “Bird Box” release was the highest single day of viewing. It’s sort of expected already given the fact that the movie was an instant hit.
“Bird Box” going viral definitely means it drew a lot of young viewers. Aside from that, since it’s a worldwide hit, its audience is wide and diverse.
More than 1/3 (or 36%) of those who watched the “Bird Box” movie were 18 to 34 year olds according to Nielsen report. 57% of the “Bird Box” audience were female, and almost half of that were Hispanic or African American.
Critics find it hard to believe the claim of Netflix that “Bird Box” is the most-watched Netflix movie to date. But looking closely, the success of “Bird Box” isn’t a lie. From the memes that circulated on social media, the new internet challenge called “the Bird Box challenge” (people will be blindfolded and try to do everyday activities) is not only seen on social media, but also done on TV by media personalities.
Bird Box Challenge fail
Best “Bird Box” memes
