Netflix
Kurt Russell as Santa Claus in "The Christmas Chronicles."
- Netflix's content boss, Ted Sarandos, said Monday that "The Christmas Chronicles," starring Kurt Russell, had 20 million views in its first week.
- "If every one of those was a movie ticket purchase, that's a $200 million opening week," he said.
- We don't know how many of those were repeat viewings, however.
Netflix doesn't release viewership numbers, but claimed "The Christmas Chronicles" is the biggest movie of Kurt Russell's career.
Netflix's Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos discussed the movie, which debuted last month, at the UBS Global
Sarandos said that, according to Russell, "The Christmas Chronicles" had the "most impact" of any of the actor's movies after its release.
"It's because, even in his successful career, he's never had that many people see one of his movies in the first week ever," Sarandos said. "That's a testimony to what we can bring to the market for storytellers today that we couldn't have ten years ago."
According to Sarandos, "The Christmas Chronicles" had 20 million views in its first week.
"If every one of those was a movie ticket purchase, that's a $200 million opening week," he said. "Even movies that go on to $1 billion don't typically do that in the first week."
But since Netflix doesn't release concrete viewing data, we don't know how many of those views are repeat viewings, or how many people watched the entire movie.
For comparison's sake, according to Box Office Mojo, Russell's biggest theatrical release in the US before inflation is Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" last year. The movie scored $146.5 million in its opening weekend and $183 million in its first week. It went on to gross almost $390 million domestically and $863 million globally. His biggest movie worldwide is "Furious 7" in 2015, which grossed over $1.5 billion total.