‘The Electric State’ Is a Viewership Dud for Netflix, Will Likely Miss All-Time Top 10

The numbers are in! The Electric State so far isn’t going to be a big hit for Netflix. Facing a headwind of a barrage of negative reviews, it didn’t stop people from checking out the movie in its first week but it’s by no means a monster hit. How does its performance stack up against Netflix’s all-time biggest hits? Let’s dive into the numbers:

One of Netflix’s most pricey movies to date, Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt headline the new movie directed by Avengers: Endgame duo, Joe and Anthony Russo. It launched on Netflix last Friday, March 14th, and comes during an early Spring spot which has worked well for Netflix in prior years with the likes of The Adam Project and Damsel last year. 

Much of the discourse over the past week for the movie has been about how critics don’t like it, and that’s undoubtedly true with that also being the case with our critic only giving a two-star rating. The critic’s score on Rotten Tomatoes sits at only 15%, with the consensus being, “Lumbering along like a giant automaton, The Electric State has plenty of hardware to back it up but none of the spark that’d make it come to life.”

That said, there does seem to be a big divide between critic sentiment and audience sentiment thus far. Don’t get me wrong, user reviews aren’t glowingly positive, but they’re certainly not as dismissive as the critics. The movie stands at 6.0 on IMDb and has a 74% audience rating on RT. 

So did the reviews matter? It didn’t put people off watching Red Notice when that released but did it here? The answer looks to be it might’ve… 

Every Tuesday, Netflix releases its top 10s so, let’s get into the stats for week 1:

• The movie debuted #1 in the English movies charts
• It featured in the weekly charts of all 93 countries
• It scored 53.80 million hours watched
• That, when you divide by the runtime, gives you 25.20 million views
• On the IMDb MovieMETER, the movie is currently the ninth most popular title. 

Of course, those numbers don’t exist in a vacumn so let’s go back and compare that run against other Netflix Original movie launches:

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As you can see – compared to Netflix’s other biggest English language swings, The Electric State does not look good barely performing above Rebel Moon’s two entries. Does this mean The Electric State is bound for Netflix’s all-time top 10? With the caveat that it’s still really early days and has a long way to go but as of week 1 it’s not looking likely. As a reminder, Netflix’s all-time list is calculated by the number of views in the first 91 days of release and those early two weeks are critical in being your launch pad. If we add The Electric State to the graph, it looks highly unlikely without a massive boost the movie achieves the all-time top 10. 

There are a lot of things The Electric State is and isn’t. Was it an expensive movie? Absolutely. Will it probably be one of the last of its kind for Netflix? Based on Dan Lin’s acquisitions and publicly announced green lights so far? Maybe. That said, don’t think for a second that Netflix will quit putting Millie Bobby Brown in films. In fact, her next project is set to enter production in April, with that being the return of Enola Holmes for a third installment, and there’s even more on the horizon. 

Are you surprised with the viewership for The Electric State? Let us know in the comments down below.