Zack Snyder would like to clarify his headline-making remarks about how Rebel Moon is actually more successful than Barbie if you go by the size of their audience. The divisive filmmaker stopped by The Joe Rogan Experience in early March where he essentially argued that more people saw the first installment of his burgeoning sci-fi franchise than Barbie. Naturally, this raised a lot of eyebrows considering Barbie is an Oscar-nominated, billion dollar success, and Rebel Moon is a streaming movie that quickly vanished from the cultural zeitgeist following a wave of dismal reviews.
In a new interview with Gizmodo, Snyder set the record straight by acknowledging that, of course, Barbie is a cultural juggernaut thanks to its theatrical release and has undoubtedly racked up a sizable amount of streaming reviews once it hit Max and VOD. When it comes to impact, Snyder readily admits there’s no comparison between theatrical and Netflix:
“The cultural significance of Barbie was happening when it was in the theaters,” Snyder said. “That’s when we all took a bite of the Barbie apple, and happily. And so my only point is that I think there is a theatrical zeitgeist [and] even though maybe more people have eyes on something, the actual sort of cultural significance is dictated still by the theater.”
However, Snyder defended his assertion that more people viewed Rebel Moon than Barbie going off the numbers he was given and Netflix’s internal calculations that asserts one view is actually two views.
“People are like, ‘Oh, well, Snyder’s crazy’ but literally I just am doing [math] with this, not anything else,” Snyder said. “If now we’re close to 100 million viewers, 100 million views times two is 200 million views … So, people are like, ‘Snyder’s delusional,’ and I am just like ‘I don’t know what to tell you.’”
In Snyder’s defense, the barrier to entry for watching Rebel Moon is much lower than going to the theater. If you have a Netflix subscription, you can turn the movie on anytime you want. However, there’s no guarantee that people are actually watching the entire film or with another person because Netflix’s metrics are notoriously murky.
So while Snyder might be correct that Rebel Moon had more views than Barbie, he seems to acknowledge that those streaming numbers don’t always translate to cultural impact.
Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver starts streaming April 19 on Netflix.
(Via Gizmodo)