‘Red Notice’ Had Netflix’s Biggest Opening Day in History
Red Notice is Netflix’s most expensive movie to date, at least according to its stars, who’ve described it as “the latest investment Netflix has made thus far in a film.” It certainly has one of Netflix’s glitziest casts, with Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot starring in the three main roles as an FBI profiler and two master thieves who chase each other around the world on the hunt for some ancient Egyptian MacGuffin.
With the full weight of Netflix’s marketing team (not to mention its algorithm serving the movie up to its subscribers), Red Notice is now also the record holder for Netflix’s biggest opening day in history. Although the company provided no numbers to back up the claim, several of the film’s stars tweeted the news, including Ryan Reynolds who wrote “WOW #RedNotice is @Netflix biggest ever opening day for a film. Congrats to the whole team!”
As usual with Netflix data, these claims are impossible to verify. Also keep in mind that Netflix typically measures these sorts of viewership numbers by counting any account that watches at least two minutes of a movie. If you accidentally hit play as soon as you open Netflix while Red Notice is the thing at the top of the screen and then you fumble with the remote for a couple minutes before switching over to Nailed It!, Netflix counts that as a view.
While subscribers on Netflix might be checking the film out, it’s certainly not Netflix’s biggest critical hit in history. The film currently has a 39 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from critics. It does hold a 92 percent audience score on the site, although that comes from only “100+ verified ratings.” (Compare that to Eternals, which has over “5,000+” ratings from viewers.)
Netflix’s subscription model is such that if you’re already paying, you have nothing to lose by trying it. Which is perhaps what the company counts on when they make something like this. Red Notice is available now on Netflix. Apparently it’s a huge hit.