‘Bird Box’ Is Netflix’s Most-Watched Original Movie

Netflix is reporting that the new Sandra Bullock horror movie Bird Box has been seen over 45 million times in its first week — breaking the record previously held by David Ayer’s Bright as the most popular opening for a Netflix original film.

Netflix involves a different level of commitment than standard box office new releases does, since so many users already have the service and do not need to spend money in order to see the latest, buzziest release — but the streaming service has such a stranglehold on a huge chunk of the entertainment business that comparing its most successful originals to top-ten movies and TV series hardly feels like a stretch.

The film, which has drawn comparisons to high-concept monster movies like A Quiet Place, has been a constant source of online chatter since it dropped last week. Fans, critics, and celebrities including Stephen King and Chrissy Tiegen have opined on the movie, which some are saying is one of the scariest they’ve ever seen on the small screen.

As with Bright, Bird Box has been better-received by audiences than critics. With two big holiday hits in a row, it is probably safe to assume that Netflix is going to make a late-December blockbuster a habit from now on.

In a recent interview with Bloody Disgusting, the cast and crew for Bird Box discussed the elusive monster, which is never shown throughout the entirety of the film. As it turns out, there was almost a sequence that revealed what the creature looked like, which was ultimately filmed but left on the cutting room floor.

“There was a time when one of the producers was like, ‘No, you have to see something at some point’ and forced me to write essentially a nightmare sequence where [Sandra Bullock’s] Malorie experiences one in that house,” screenwriter Eric Heisserer — who has worked recently with Valiant Comics — explained.

So, what exactly did the monster look like?

“It was a green man with a horrific baby face,” Bullock explained. “It was snake-like, and I was like, ‘I don’t want to see it when it first happens. Just bring it into the room. We’ll shoot the scene.’ I turn and he’s like this [growling at me.] It’s making me laugh. It was just a long fat baby.”

“It so easily becomes funny.” director Suzanne Bier added. “We actually shot that and spent a lot of energy on, but every time I saw it, I was like ‘This is not going to be tense. It’s just going to be funny.’ At first, Sandy was like, ‘I don’t want to see it’ because she thought it was scary. Then it was like, ‘Don’t show it to me because [I’ll laugh].’ Every time I did it, I was like, ‘Shit, that’s a different film.’”