Part 1 of filmmaker Zach Snyder's Rebel Moon film series garnered miserable reviews from critics and a so-so audience performance on Netflix, given that its pre-Christmas-Week release.
But while appearing on the widely followed Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Snyder suggested that Rebel Moon: Part 1 was actually seen by more people worldwide than the biggest film at the box office last year, Warner Bros. Pictures' Barbie.
Rebel Moon had nearly 73 million account views in its first four weeks on Netflix, before it disappeared from view on the streaming service's weekly top 10 ranker.
Snyder theorizes that the film currently has between 80 million - 90 million views.
"Say right now it’s almost at 90 million views, right? Eighty [million] or 90 million accounts turned it on, give or take," Snyder said. "They assume two viewers per screening, right? ... So you think if that movie was in the theater as a distribution model, that’s like 160,000,000 people supposedly watching based on that math. One hundred and sixty million people at $10 a ticket would be … what is that math? I don’t know ... 160,000,000 times ten. That’s $1.6 billion."
For its part, Barbie generated $1.4 billion at the global box office in 2023.
"So more people probably saw Rebel Moon than saw Barbie in the theater, right? That’s how crazy Netflix is,” Snyder added. “That’s the distribution model that they’ve set up."
