Netflix’s ‘Christmas Chronicles’ Kurt Russell’s biggest movie: Ted Sarandos

Kurt
Russell as Santa Claus in “The Christmas
Chronicles.”
Netflix

• Netflix’s content boss, Ted Sarandos, said Monday that “The
  Christmas Chronicles,” starring Kurt Russell, had 20 million
  views in its first week. 
• “If every one of those was a movie ticket purchase, that’s a
  $200 million opening week,” he said. 
• We don’t know how many of those were repeat viewings,
  however.

Netflix doesn’t release viewership numbers, but claimed “The
Christmas Chronicles” is the biggest movie of Kurt Russell’s
career.

Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos discussed the movie,
which debuted last month, at the UBS Global Media and
Communications Conference on Monday. It stars Russell as a
“savvy, straight-talking” Santa Claus who
teams up with young siblings to save Christmas after the pair
crash his sleigh.

Sarandos said that, according to Russell, “The Christmas
Chronicles” had the “most impact” of any of the actor’s films
after its release.

“It’s because, even in his successful career, he’s never had that
many people see one of his films in the first week ever,”
Sarandos said. “That’s a testimony to what we can bring to the
market for storytellers today that we couldn’t have ten years
ago.”

According to Sarandos, “The Christmas Chronicles” had 20 million
views in its first week.

“If every one of those was a movie ticket purchase, that’s a $200
million opening week,” he said. “Even films that go on to $1
billion don’t typically do that in the first week.”

But since Netflix doesn’t release concrete viewing data, we don’t
know how many of those views are repeat viewings, or how many
people watched the entire movie.

For comparison’s sake, according to Box Office Mojo, Russell’s
biggest theatrical release in the US before inflation is Marvel’s
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” last year. The movie scored
$146.5 million in its opening weekend and  $183 million in
its first week. It went on to gross almost $390 million
domestically and $863 million globally. His biggest movie
worldwide is “Furious 7” in 2015, which grossed over $1.5 billion
total.