“Bird Box” recently sparked major interest within the pop culture community with its release as a Netflix original on Dec. 21, 2018.
The film’s plot is based upon a woman and her children forced to wear a blindfold to avoid supernatural entities of the world that are causing people to either commit suicide or force others to look.
The main character, Malorie, is played by Sandra Bullock. Starring alongside Bullock are Trevante Rhodes, Jacki Weaver, Rosa Salazar, Machine Gun Kelly and Danielle Macdonald.
The film was inspired by Josh Malerman’s novel “Bird Box” released in 2014. The novel shares a similar outline and plot. It was directed by Susanne Bier based upon a screenplay directed by Eric Heisserer.
Social media played a major role in the outbreak of the film. A multitude of tweets broke out after the release of the film, mocking and playing with the idea of being blindfolded.
Because of the mass popularity the film has built up over early January of 2019, social media streamers introduced the “Bird Box challenge.” The trend mocked the film’s use of blindfolds, challenging viewers around the world to complete daily tasks while wearing a blindfold. This quickly caused major controversy when a woman drove into traffic blindfolded in Utah, prompting police to make official statements along with Netflix.
After the release, the hashtag “#BirdBox” trended on Twitter for several days. The popularity of the movie left many social media users curious to explore the plot.
Rights to present “Bird Box” cinematically were granted to Universal Pictures in 2013, prior to the novel even being released. Scott Stuber and Chris Morgan were then hired to produce the film. In July 2017, Netflix announced that rights to the book were acquired after Stuber became head of the feature film division of the company.
The original filming began in California in 2017. Scenes shot in the wilderness took place on the Smith River, far north of the state.
“Bird Box’s” world premiere occurred at AFI Fest, held by the American Film Institute on Nov. 12, 2018. However, because major forest fires were occurring in northern California, Netflix pulled its premiere, out of respect for the victims. About a month later, on Dec. 14, “Bird Box” began making small premieres supervised under Netflix’s discretion. The film was officially released onto the Netflix database later that month, on Dec. 21.
“Bird Box” was reported to have the biggest seven-day viewership to date with over 45 million screenings, unlike any other Netflix original film.