It’s hard to quantify what makes a success for Netflix, when the streaming service isn’t concerned with the critical consensus or box office numbers, while even the standard metric of massive viewership figures aren’t always a guarantee that a franchise will be born.
One notable example is Michael Bay’s 6 Underground, which ranks as one of the platform’s fourth most-watched original movie ever, but the $150 million blockbuster didn’t prove popular enough to generate a sequel. On a surface level, Red Notice ticks a lot of similar boxes, so we’ll be very interested to see if that multi-film series that’s already been teased ends up happening or not.
Both big budget actioners star Ryan Reynolds, but Red Notice cost $50 million more to produce than 6 Underground, and neither of them could even crack a 40% score on Rotten Tomatoes. However, Netflix are touting the former as having the most-watched opening day of all-time, which is set to translate into huge audience engagement.
On top of that, FlixPatrol reports that Red Notice instantly ascended to the top of the most-watched list in no less than 88 countries, even if New Zealand ended up preferring catfishing Christmas rom-com Love Hard to Rawson Marshall Thurber’s globetrotting crowd-pleaser, but each to their own.