There was talk in the buildup to its debut that Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead could potentially dethrone Chris Hemsworth’s Extraction as Netflix’s most-watched original movie ever, based on the goodwill towards his four-hour HBO Max cut of Justice League and the high concept premise of a heist thriller taking place within the context of the zombie genre.
It might not be able to hit those heights, but the streaming service is predicting a very strong showing nonetheless. Despite only being released a week ago, Army of the Dead is already on track to be viewed by 72 million households in its first four weeks of availability, which would see it comfortably sail past the 66 million accrued by Anthony Mackie’s Outside the Wire to become the platform’s most-watched original movie of the year, and you can check out the celebratory post below.
72 million households are betting on dead.
ARMY OF THE DEAD has been the #1 film around the world and is projected to be one of Netflix’s most popular films ever in its first 4 weeks. pic.twitter.com/85foTPFAny
— Netflix Tudum (@NetflixTudum) May 28, 2021
Should those numbers pan out, in terms of the all-time chart, Army of the Dead would be tied with George Clooney’s existential sci-fi The Midnight Sky in joint ninth place, which is admittedly a little lower than expected given the buzz surrounding both the film and its director. R-ratings clearly don’t effect Netflix originals drawing in an audience, either, when the only efforts in the all-time Top 10 that don’t skew towards older viewers are Enola Holmes and Adam Sandler’s Murder Mystery.
That being said, 72 million streams in a month is still a massive number that accounts for over a third of Netflix’s entire customer base, and it’ll be interesting to see how well prequel Army of Thieves fares whenever it arrives as the Army of the Dead cinematic universe gets off to a strong start.