One of the things that sucks about streaming services is we can’t judge how they performed the way we can box office numbers. Most companies don’t reveal their true viewership stats unless they’re really good, keeping the other numbers, that maybe aren’t so great, secret.
In the case of The Matrix Resurrections, the viewership stats seem to be middling at best. Keep in mind these aren’t official by any means, but Samba TV (via Deadline) says it was watched by 2.8M smart TV households over its first five days of streaming release on HBO Max. Along with the ho-hum $22.5M box office debut, this suggests people weren’t exactly flocking to jump back into the Matrix.
For comparison’s sake, 2.8M is way below the 3.6M viewers for Godzilla vs. Kong earlier this year. That sequel also did double the box office business, $48.1M, on the way to $100M in the U.S. and $467M worldwide. The Matrix Resurrections isn’t going to come close to those figures, even though it shares the same hybrid release.
Hurting The Matrix is the fact it was the most pirated movie for the week according to MUSO. This is another factor Warner Bros. didn’t deal with appropriately when planning this theatrical/streaming model. It’s easy for the torrent sites to obtain a clean digital copy once the film is available online for streaming.