Back in 2019, Netflix released data claiming that 45 million accounts – nearly a third of its total subscribers – had streamed the Sandra Bullock thriller Bird Box in its first week on the platform, a record for a Netflix film.
At face value that statistic was extraordinary. All things being equal, had the Susanne Bier-directed film been released in cinemas, it would have racked up nearly half a billion pounds in just one week based on an average ticket price of £10.
That record has since been surpassed by the 2021 comedy action movie Red Notice, which notched up 328.8 million viewing hours and has been seen by over 50 percent of all Netflix users. As reported by Screencrush, Bird Box took four weeks to rack up its 282 million viewing hours. In contrast, Red Notice surpassed that total in just 18 days.
It was proof of the soaring demand to stream movies at home and equally of the importance to streamers of securing original must-see content.
As for the effect on traditional moviegoing…
You are not signed in
Only registered users can read the rest of this article.
Network Control: Turning 5G into a production tool
Speed, flexibility, and reliability – that’s the dream for many a live production. However, when public network coverage is patchy, what’s a broadcaster to do? The 2026 Accelerator Project, Network Control, deploys standardised network APIs to tackle this problem head-on.
Film University Babelsberg to preview immersive Auschwitz project at IBC2026
Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf will present an immersive digital reconstruction of a little-known site associated with Auschwitz at IBC2026, as part of EIT Culture & Creativity's first major presence at the show.
.jpg)
Innovation Awards: Investigating 2026’s Content Creation finalists
What does it take to win a technological innovation award in content creation? Fergal Ringrose, Chair of Judges for the IBC Innovation Awards, assesses the top three projects in the running – revealing the key characteristics of each of the most competitive submissions.
Branded entertainment: Money, freedom, and audiences unite
As traditional broadcasters battle decreasing budgets and attention spans, brands have come to the fore as collaborators in an increasingly lucrative and creatively fertile strand of the media business.
FRAMES: Automating the archive end-to-end
Despite the availability of hundreds of generative AI tools, pre-production environments are still struggling to find a semantic archive search solution that is technically feasible and effective in the real world. Enter FRAMES.
