Despite toxic reviews (or quite possibly nudged along in part because of them), Netflix is enjoying some big fat viewership numbers for their Will Smith orc cop drama Bright.
According to Nielsen data, Bright saw a U.S. audience of 11 million TV viewers in its first three days on the streaming service. Obviously, the effort and price attached to seeing a movie on Netflix aren’t directly comparable to box office totals, but the sizeable viewership numbers from Bright‘s debut should come as good news to Netflix’s top brass who ponied up $90 million to make the movie happen.
The breakdown of the demos for Bright viewers indicates that the film was more likely to be checked out by men (the gender split is 56% male) and an average minute crowd of 3.9 million viewers came from the ever-coveted 18-34 age demographic. The early success in getting viewers to press play serves as a strong counterargument to industry figures that claim Rotten Tomatoes is killing the movie business.
It’s hard to tell if the collection of sexual harassment and assault claims leveled at Bright screenwriter Max Landis dissuaded any portion of the public from watching the movie.
(Via Deadline)
