Cloverfield fails to make major impact on Netflix
February 16, 2018
By Nik Roseveare
Netflix produced a huge surprise during the Super Bowl LII commercials, airing an ad that revealed the SVoD service had acquired the exclusive first-run rights to the third movie in the popular Cloverfield sci-fi franchise – and that it would be available to stream later that night.
However, according to Nielsen, despite paying what would doubtlessly have been a colossal sum for a Super Bowl commerial, the movie only secured modest viewing figures in the US.
The Cloverfield Paradox pulled in 5 million views in its first 7 days (some 785,000 of which watched it straight after the Super Bowl) according to Nielsen’s new SVoD measuring service. By comparison, the same Nielsen measurements reported Netflix’ last big movie release, Bright (starring Will Smith), as achieving 11 million views during its first week in December 2017 (it should be noted that Netflix does not release official viewing figures, and has always questioned the accuracy of third-party trackers).
The Cloverfield Paradox also failed to wow critics. It currently holds an 18 per cent rating on movie review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes. Many have stated that Paramount Pictures are the real winners in the stunt, with Netflix paying them a reported $50 million for a movie that would almost certainly have bombed if given a theatrical release. But Netflix would surely point to the buzz it created in successfully springing such a surprise during the most watched TV event of the year and deem the movie (and commercial) worth every penny.