Doing the rounds to build excitement for his Rebel Moon movies, filmmaker Zack Snyder made a bold claim when he talked to Joe Rogan about the potential box office success of Part One: A Child of Fire.
He reasoned that, had the movie been released in theaters, it had the potential to earn more than Barbie.
Reflecting on A Child of Fire's success on Netflix, Snyder explained, "Say right now, [Rebel Moon has] like almost 90 million views...80 or 90 million accounts turned it on, give or take. They assume two viewers per screen, right? That’s the math..so that’s 160 million people supposedly watching; 160 million people at $10 a ticket, that’s $1.6 billion."
"[Barbie made $1.5 billion.] So more people probably saw Rebel Moon than saw Barbie in the theater," he continued. "That’s how crazy Netflix is - that’s the distribution model that they’ve set up."
While Snyder was seemingly just making a point about the reach Netflix has compared to traditional big screen releases, it didn't take long for people to point out that his math was off and how it was borderline delusional to think Rebel Moon would ever make that much money.
Talking to io9 (via SFFGazette.com), the Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver director was asked if he was saying that theatrical distribution is no longer as important as it once was.
"Oh, no, I would say it’s kind of the opposite," Snyder explained. "What I was implying was, well, there are two things. One is I was just going by the numbers that I was given by Netflix. People are like, 'Oh, well, Snyder’s crazy' but literally I just am doing [math] with this, not anything else. 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.'"
"Who knows what [Barbie’s] done on Max and all that," he added. "The cultural significance of Barbie was happening when it was in the theaters. 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."
It appears Snyder doesn't believe Rebel Moon was a bigger hit than Barbie after all, though it's important to note that Netflix often counts just a few seconds of viewership as a "view," meaning the figures they gave him were likely way off, regardless.
Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire has 21% on Rotten Tomatoes, while the sequel - Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver - has earned a dire 17% since hitting Netflix last Friday. Barbie, on the other hand, sits at 88%.