‘Beasts of No Nation’ Reveals Nation of Cozy Homebodies

Directed by True Detective’s Cary Fukunaga, the film stars Idris Elba as an African warlord who trains a young orphan to become a guerilla soldier and join his militia.

Have you seen the film?

Netflix content boss Ted Sarandos has said today that the original drama “Beasts of No Nation” has been streamed over 3 million times in 10 days since it was released, a huge number for an independent film.

Shares of Netflix (NFLX – Get Report) are down by 0.78% to $102.24 in late-morning trading on Tuesday, reversing an earlier pop, despite the company releasing strong viewing numbers from its first theater-ready film, Beasts of No Nation. “There’s only so much we can do about what happens in the theater”, the Netflix CCO said. But the company has just let out a bit of info to show that its awards contender “Beasts of No Nation” is finding an audience. Sarandos did clarify Beasts of No Nation was the most-watched movie on Netflix in every country the streaming platform services, even in the nations where specialty films can’t or don’t usually succeed in terms of box office revenue. Theyve started with Beasts of No Nations, a limited release prestige picture that was seen in film festivals prior to being seen online. “But if you look at a movie like War Machine or Adam Sandler’s The Ridiculous Six coming in December, these are studio-sized films”, he said. Even with the small sample size, the low per-theater average could factor into how Netflix decides to distribute films outside of the friendly confines of their approved devices. We can make it available and try to book it, but if theater owners don’t want to book it, they won’t book it. Whether it’s in a theater or at home, our focus is on the total audience of the film.

Sarandos noted that Netflix is focusing on making the film available to all 69 million of its subscribers around the world, in more than 50 countries.

Do you know how many people watch House of Cards? “And they are seeing, and loving, this movie”. “It’s a very sexy thing to talk about whether there’s a feud, but I think what’s really happening here is that we’re offering consumers a lot of choices they didn’t have just a few years ago”.