The Cloverfield movies are famous for being secretive with their marketing, but The Cloverfield Paradox took that up a notch by coming out only hours after the title was revealed and the trailer premiered. Originally supposed to be theatrically released like Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane, Paramount Pictures decided to sell The Cloverfield Paradox to Netflix for around $50 million, and the streaming service made the movie_available immediately after Super Bowl LII concluded on February 4. _The Cloverfield Paradox has since been widely panned by critics, and its viewership didn't fare much better, as it was reportedly only watched 5 million times its first week.
According to data collected by Nielsen (via Variety), The Cloverfield Paradox collected 2.8 million views in the United States, but after five more days, that number only grew to 5 million. For comparison, Bright, Netflix's first blockbuster and the streaming service's most expensive movie to date, also received a fair amount of negative reviews, but it was watched over 11 million times in just its first three days. No doubt Bright benefited from being advertised for half a year, whereas The Cloverfield Paradox was dropped out of the blue. Granted, it was released and promoted on the same day as the biggest football game of the year, but even that can't compare to marketing a movie on TV and across the interwebs for months.
But the lack of marketing on The Cloverfield Paradox is presumably just one part of the problem, as bad word-of-mouth undoubtedly hasn't helped either. The Cloverfield Paradox ranks at a dismal 18% on Rotten Tomatoes among critics, while the Audience Score is more mixed at 51%. Granted, as mentioned earlier, Bright wasn't a critical darling either, but at least it had great viewership, and Netflix has already greenlit a sequel which will see Will Smith and director David Ayer returning. It is worth mentioning that Nielsen, a third-party service not affiliated with Netflix, only accounts for U.S. viewers on connected TVs (not including mobile devices and computers), but even taking that into account, it's clear that The Cloverfield Paradox won't go down as one of the streaming platform's greatest hits.
Directed by Julius Onah, The Cloverfield Paradox stars Daniel Brühl, Elizabeth Debicki, Aksel Hennie, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Chris O'Dowd, John Ortiz, David Oyelowo, and Zhang Ziyi, and follows a group of astronauts aboard a space station who have to find a way back home after being accidentally transported to another dimension following a particle accelerator experiment. You can judge the movie for yourself by streaming it on Netflix. The Cloverfield series will continue with this October's Overlord, which Paramount still intends to release in theaters. If you want to see what else is coming out on Netflix this year, head over to our handy premiere guide.
