Zack Snyder wants you to believe Rebel Moon: Part 1 would've made Barbie levels of box office bank

The best movie that most people turned off after 20 minutes of 2023 is back to making noise, as writer-director Zack Snyder wants to convince us Rebel Moon: Part 1 would have made as much money as Barbie ($1.4 billion) had it opened in theaters, instead of dropping exclusively on Netflix.

Even those who'd faithfully defended each of the divisive filmmaker's movies and enjoyed the first Rebel Moon are scratching their heads right now, as the number-crunching that Snyder performed to arrive at such a wild conclusion while talking to Variety seems dubious to say the least.

Before I dig into why this is the kind of delusional talk you'd expect from his rabid fanbase instead of the man himself, here's the full quote: "You think about Netflix, for instance, where you push a button... Rebel Moon, right? Say right now it’s almost at 90 million views, right? 80 or 90 million accounts turned it on, give or take. They assume two viewers per screening, right? That’s the kind of math. So you think if that movie was in the theater as a distribution model, that’s like 160,000,000 people supposedly watching based on that math. 160,000,000 people at $10 a ticket would be... what is that math? I don’t know. 160,000,000 times ten. That’s 1.6 billion. So more people probably saw ‘Rebel Moon’ than saw ‘Barbie’ in the theater, right?"

He doesn't even sound convinced by his own on-the-spot calculations, yet he comes out of the process saying with a straight face that each 'screening' of Rebel Moon involved two people and that everyone made it through the whole thing, which may be hard to digest looking at its audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. From a certain point of view, Rebel Moon was a 'success' for Netflix, meaning a lot of subscribers pressed play on the movie. But as we all know from past streaming data, most people don't finish the movies they start watching, especially when reviews aren't kind to them. So there's that to take into account.

Moreover, Snyder straight-up ignores that poorly received movies usually perform well anyway in terms of streaming as long as they've got a big enough marketing push, because subs typically try to get their money's worth out of their sub. Comparing its streaming performance to any kind of theatrical staying power isn't anchored in reality, as people are traditionally pickier with what they spend their cinema money on, with a single ticket nowadays amounting to a monthly Netflix sub. Following that logic, Morbius should've been a box office hit because it performed well on Netflix months after flopping.

The filmmaker, whom I once genuinely respected, then went on to ramble about Netflix's strengths and the positives of their model. Of course, half of his words are just PR talk, but he also seems genuinely convinced that this might be the way forward after his falling off with Warner Bros. and other major studios that wouldn't finance his post-DC ventures. Meanwhile, every company that isn't Netflix (which, by the way, is still running on debt despite its impressive growth) is resetting streaming plans and shifting the focus back to cinemas.