The Truly Viral Movie is Here

‘Bird Box’ and Netflix’s reduction of fiction friction

Yes, I watched Bird Box. Judging from Netflix’s stated numbers, you probably did too (or, at least, part of it). The fact that it’s not a great movie — it’s fine — is probably what is most interesting about our collective viewership. Netflix just unlocked the first truly viral movie. And did so in a way only Netflix can.

At a high level, movie virality is nothing new. Some of the most successful movies of all time did a large part of their business due to word-of-mouth. Actually, this is undoubtedly what drove all of them to such heights. And in more recent years, we’ve all seen plenty of viral videos on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and the like. But Bird Box is different.

This isn’t something Netflix could have done even a few years ago. But now they’re at such a scale, where a simple push — in some cases, an actual push (notification), and in others, the prime placement of a banner, and perhaps an auto-playing trailer — can lead directly to millions upon millions of views. No surprise, they’ve done this by removing friction.

In the good old days, to see a “viral” movie, you had to hear about it, look up a showtime at a local theater, drive to said theater, buy a ticket to said movie, and sit through said movie in said theater. In this new era, you perhaps don’t even have to hear about said movie — again, maybe it’s just right there when you open the app — you simply sit through said movie in your living room.¹

Said another way: time, time, time, money, time has been compressed down to just time.² Talk about streamlined.

In my case, I watched Bird Box because so many people were talking about it on Twitter. It was word-of-mouth, but not necessarily in the normal sense — again, the movie is decent, but not great and the chatter I saw was largely meme-based! — and yet there it was, staring me in the face when I opened Netflix. It was basically begging me to click-to-watch. And so I did. And so this shows yet again why Netflix is lightyears ahead of traditional Hollywood.

This isn’t the first attempt Netflix has had in this arena. During last year’s Super Bowl, they attempted to do the same basic thing with a commercial for The Cloverfield Paradox. It was clever because unlike so many other movie trailers shown during the event, the kicker was that you could watch the movie right now. Again, all of the friction had been compressed to time.

But ultimately, Netflix likely figured out two things from that experiment. First, you don’t even need to spend tens of millions of dollars to promote this type of movie. In fact, a simple in-app promotion likely reaches as many people as a Super Bowl ad — and it undoubtedly leads to much higher conversion! Second, for the virality to truly work, the movie has to be at least halfway decent. Cloverfield Paradox was not. Bird Box is.

Last night, Bloomberg’s Eric Newcomer and I had a debate about whether or not Netflix runs the risk of a “boy who cried ‘wolf!’” situation if they keep doing these tactics with less-than-stellar movies. I agree that this is a risk, but far less of one than with movies in theaters. Because again, time-to-discover has been compressed to zero, thus negating the “Rotten Tomatoes Effect”. Bad reviews, even in aggregate, can’t sink a film if it doesn’t actually open. It’s just there, ready to be watched. This adds subjectivity back into the equation.

But again, if a movie isn’t loved (or at least talked about) by most people, the true virality won’t kick in. And, of course, it does ultimately behoove Netflix to only massively promote films they’re proud of, from a brand perspective.³ Then again, they have the data to know what their audience wants to watch (even if they say something different in public), and they can very granularly tailor such promotions to certain people based on such desires. Brilliant.

Of this I’m certain: if Bird Box were released in theaters, relatively few people would have seen it. It was a longer, less clever version of A Quiet Place.⁴ The only reason it would have generated any business was the same reason it would have gotten made: Sandra Bullock.⁵ But on Netflix, her star power, mixed with the aforementioned reduction of friction and Netflix’s promotion led to a huge hit. The first truly viral movie.

¹ Or really, anywhere, if you’re watching it on a mobile device.

² I would argue ‘money’ is removed because you’re paying for Netflix anyway — though there are probably at least a few people who signed up for Netflix in order to watch Bird Box?

³ Though you could argue they wouldn’t make (or buy) a film they weren’t proud of in at least some capacity…

⁴ A movie which, you could certainly argue, did so well because of — wait for it — great word-of-mouth (great irony given the plot, to boot!) and reviews!

⁵ Similar to my argument about the truly fantastic film, Michael Clayton. Which would undoubtedly be a Netflix movie these days.