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Atlas, Jennifer Lopez’s latest Netflix flick, racked up more than 28 million views over Memorial Day Weekend, while not quite 3 million people bought tickets to see the latest Mad Max movie.
Premiering Friday, May 24, Atlas debuted atop Netflix’s English Films List with 28.2 million views, making it the most-watched title for the week of May 20. All told, the sci-fi thriller reached the Netflix Top 10 in 93 countries.
Lopez’s previous Netflix outing, The Mother, had a Mother’s Day Weekend 2023 release and proceeded to top the streamer’s in-house Top 10 list for four consecutive weeks. On Netflix’s all-time ranking of English films, The Mother stands at No. 8, with more than 136 million views. (Netflix rightly defines a “view” as total minutes streamed divided by running time.)
Directed by Brad Peyton (San Andreas, Rampage) and penned by Aron Eli Coleite (Daybreak) and Leo Sardarian, Atlas follows Lopez’s titular character, a brilliant but misanthropic data analyst with a deep distrust of artificial intelligence. When Atlas joins a mission to capture a renegade robot with whom she shares a mysterious past, plans go awry, and her only hope of saving the future of humanity from AI is to trust it. The cast also includes Simu Liu (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), Sterling K. Brown (This Is Us, American Fiction), Abraham Popoola (Extraordinary, The Curse), Lana Parrilla (Once Upon a Time), Mark Strong (Sky One’s Temple) and Gregory James Cohan.
Atlas‘ beefy watch-at-home debut came as the actual, venture-to-a-moviehouse box office struggled.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, per sister site THR, grossed an estimated $32 million domestically for the four-day weekend, making it the worst No. 1 Memorial Day Weekend debut since Casper in 1995 scared up just $22.5 million. (Said sad stat excludes 2020, when theaters were closed during the pandemic.)
In claiming the weekend win, Furiosa (which reportedly carried a nearly $170 million budget) barely declawed The Garfield Movie, which wound up drawing $31.1 million in the U.S. (against a reported $50 million budget).
Furiosa has a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 90%, while Atlas mustered just 50%.
Unfortunately the 28 million figure hardly gives and accurate picture of how many people watched the movie. maybe the auto-play ran one the app home screen for more than 30 seconds or people check in for a couple of minutes and decided not to continue. To compare it to ticket sales really doesn’t make sense.
nevermind. netflix seems to have adjusted their definition of a view.
Never heard of it, no interest in seeing it. Didn’t want to see Furiosa, either, though.
I see people citing everyone just wanting to stay home for poor box office numbers and sure that’s part of it…but how much is it that unless you’re watching a lot of youtube ads (and the algorithm gets a good hit) or for some reason still watch network (and don’t mute the ads/look at your phone), are you even SEEING promotion? I remember after Wish did poorly seeing a lot of people, for-real nerds too, saying “What’s that?” They literally *never* heard of it until it was out. I’d been seeing a ton of promotion for it, b/c I already followed multiple Disney sm accounts. But it seems like unless you are already really dialed in to something, be it a studio or IP or streaming service, you don’t hear about what new thing is coming out save by luck. If people don’t feel like there’s “buzz” they’re not going to go see something. I’m not sure people realize how much harder it is now for promotion to actually break in to a lot of people’s bubbles.
I hope the box office recovers, tbh. There are some movies that are just so worth seeing in theaters. And this year has some promising offerings: Deadpool & Wolverine, Wicked, Moana 2, Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, Mufasa The Lion King…
Netflix said that 28 million MINUTES were watched, not that it had 28 million individual views.
Incorrect; per press release, “Jennifer Lopez’ Atlas debuted atop the English Films List with 28.2M views, making it the most-watched title of the week.” (Netflix hasn’t touted “minutes” in a long while, they now report views.)
When people would rather stay home and watch a rotten film over a highly praised one speaks volumes about how we want to watch our movies.
Damn
We must take into account that consumer viewership for media has changed so much. If you want a successful film in theaters, then you must know your audience. Wanna get entertained? You can do that for free on TikTok or Instagram Reels. Wanna watch “made-for-streaming” movies or shows? We got so many streaming services now, people will watch and binge anything these days. Wanna get people into the theaters? Studios must make content that people would be willing to shell out big money for… going to the movies ain’t cheap, but people will drive out if there is something they can connect with: just look at Barbie and Oppenheimer last year. One was fun and the other was serious, opened on the same weekend, both made a lot of money, and both were critically acclaimed. Did people really want Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga? I don’t think so. The movie business ain’t dead, it’s just the people who run these corporations/media companies aren’t in tune with the audience. Of course, they’ll just make “blame” it on other things and not release interesting films (Coyote Vs. Acme, yes, I’m looking at you WB) as tax losses.
9 years is too long a wait to follow up “Fury Road,” and I think most people that were interested in that would have rather had a sequel with Theron and not a prequel with someone else.
show me proof that furiosa is “highly praised”…reviews have been middling at best.
It’s not complicated:
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*There are people that star in movies now. There are no more movie stars. No one is a “box office draw” anymore.
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* Theater outings are too expensive. (Saw “Furiosa”– $27)
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* I will be able to rent the film for $20 or own it for $5 more in a matter of weeks.
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* $25-$30 pays for a lot of streaming content for a month.
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* “The Fall Guy?” VOD TWO WEEKS after theaters and will be on Peacock by the end of June. (Same with the upcoming “Twisters” What’s the point of a theater?
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* Large TVs and decent sound systems are cheap these days. That’s enough for 99% of films, as all a theater can offer me at this point is screen size.
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* “The Theater experience? People kicking my seat. People playing on their phones. People using the movie as background for what they REALLY want to do. Why do I want that? My home experience is superior almost always.
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There are many reasons theater is dying, but it’s dying and it’s not coming back.
The watching movies at home experience: constant interruptions, family never in agreement on when to watch, never sitting down on time to finish a movie in one go, the sound of my stupid neighbor blasting his muscle car down the road and my other neighbor’s dog barking, people on their phones for half the movie…
Why my family has like five movies we could watch right now but will just sit for months unseen as we watch shorter form content that actually fits our schedule. And I can’t fit an IMAX in the house. Watching a great movie with an audience of fellow fans is FANTASTIC, an experience that cannot be matched at home. It’s just getting those movies made and advertised.
YMMV, I guess.
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But I can put myself in my media room now when I’d like and have a good experience. I don’t have loud neighbors, and don’t have kids to ruin it because I never wanted them.
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And, if I can’t watch said movie in one go for whatever reason, I can go back to it when time permits. I can’t pay slightly under $30 for a trip to see “Furiosa” in a theater and get my money back because the guy two rows in front of me has his FB page open at max brightness.
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Sure, I could complain, but all that back and forth (assuming it works and the irritation stops) the movie is still ruined. And they’re not giving me a refund.
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Also, like I said, size is the only thing the theater has going for it is size, so, you can have your IMAX because most movies don’t gain anything from it anyway. A more, “immersive experience?” Okay, but, also, shrug.
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At any rate, theaters are not coming back. They are going to live off two or three hits a year and limp along the rest of the way on themed festivals, rentals, and 50th Anniversary runs of “Die Hard.”
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Hollywood is making and advertising plenty of movies. The problem, since even before the pandemic, is that increasingly fewer people care.
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There will always be theaters, but in 20 years there will probably be 85% fewer and the 16-screen multiplexes will be the exception rather than the rule.
The phone screen thing is starting to get better, people are getting screen covers where you can’t see the screen from the side/keeping their brightness down, i haven’t seen near as many people that I’d glare at as I used to. I was getting pretty angry for a while there. As for seat kicking, most of the theaters I go to have the big recliners where no one but the people next to you could possibly disturb you. Fall Guy was so much fun with a crowd. I just hope they can survive. I would miss it greatly, I’d say I’m at the theater 75% of weekends of the year. As for cost, if you’re going a lot, AMC and Regal both have great programs for that (well I can’t really speak for Regal’s, i just know they have it)
I’m paying for Netflix, so I watched it. Like so many of their original movies, it was dumb, but it was there.
Alot of minutes for naps. Film was a snooze fest!