It’s become a running joke that it takes an eternity for new seasons of Netflix original shows to arrive, and the same approach can technically be applied to its feature-length franchises too, after Bird Box Barcelona finally premiered almost five years after the Sandra Bullock-led original.
The apocalyptic horror thriller was a massive cultural and social media sensation that captured imaginations all over the world, with the literary adaptation winding up as one of the streaming service’s most-watched in-house movies of all-time, and it still sits on the Top 10 half a decade on from its debut.
In most cases, additional installments would be churned out as quick as possible, but Bird Box‘s moment in the zeitgeist has long since passed. However, that hasn’t prevented Barcelona from opening its eyes and gazing right at the number one spot on the most-watched charts, with FlixPatrol revealing the standalone spin-off to have arrived as the top-viewed title in 45 countries in total.
It doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel in terms of its narrative, and critics have been a lot colder to the second chapter than its predecessor, but if it draws in the numbers Netflix is hoping for then there’s no doubt going to be even more Bird Box to come in the future.
The world has plenty of potential for further exploration, let’s just hope it turns out to be a little more exciting should those plans for a string of localized offshoots come to fruition as Netflix shifts its IP-driven strategy to conquer the world one nation at a time.
