There was such promise when director Zack Snyder decided to rebuff the theatrical studio machine to take his film ideas to Netflix, a streamer known to throw around insane amounts of money on risky projects that tend to overspend on talent with bloated budgets. “Army of The Dead,” another zombie flick after his well-received “Dawn of The Dead” (penned by James Gunn) seemed to have modest success at Netflix with somewhat approval from both critics and audiences with a sequel, “Planet of The Dead,” expected to be Snyder’s next feature film.

Well, the recently debuted “Rebel Moon- Part One: A Child of Fire” dropped this month, and there are now some official viewership numbers released by the streaming service to give us an idea of how the movie is doing with Netflix subscribers. Netflix’s own first three-day viewership data has been released for “Rebel Moon – Part One” (via What’s On Netflix) and those numbers aren’t exactly that impressive. While it ended up with 23.9 million and might seem solid, What’s On Netflix added some context comparing “Rebel Moon” to other Netflix original films released in 2023 and the sci-fi pic doesn’t even crack the Top 8 films. Since the box office isn’t really a gauge for success with streaming feature films, the viewership data is really all we have to work with.

Here’s what the Top 10 movies looked like from What’s On Netflix’s list of 2023 films based on their first three days of performance and “Rebel Moon” is squarely in that ninth place spot:

MURDER MYSTERY 2 – 42.9M

THE MOTHER – 42.9M

EXTRACTION 2 – 42.8M

LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND – 41.7M

HEART OF STONE – 33.1M

YOU PEOPLE – 28.3M

THE KILLER – 27.9M

YOUR PLACE OR MINE – 27.7M

REBEL MOON – 23.9M

THE PALE BLUE EYE – 19.8M

The ambitious pic didn’t exactly win over critics but the lower-than-expected numbers might speak for themselves. Still, this is only part 1 of a two-parter, plus, there have been promises of a “more mature director’s cut” of the film in early 2024 (Whatever that means). If these early numbers are any indication, Netflix might be second-guessing any follow-ups given the cost vs return for the streaming giant. Perhaps, we won’t be seeing any more of these two-parter productions from Snyder anytime soon as the release model (two different edits) and splitting a single film into two might be part of the problem here, this isn’t exactly “Hunger Games” or “Dune.”

A trailer for “Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver” was released over the holidays and is still expected to drop on April 19, 2024, as planned.

SOURCE: NETFLIX VIA WHAT’S ON NETFLIX?