The tale of the Snow Society keeps extending its footprint across the film world. The movie collected 12 awards at the latest Goya Awards, placing it among the ceremony’s most decorated titles in history. With two Oscar nominations on the horizon, the film contends for best international feature and best makeup and hairstyling. The excitement around prizes often fuels ticket sales, yet this year the usual momentum felt oddly tempered. After Venice, director JA Bayona released the film in a limited theatrical run in December before it streamed in January.
Box office figures remain elusive since Netflix does not disclose theater receipts. Still, theater data reported to the Ministry of Culture shows the exhibition earned over 255,000 euros in donations in the first two days, underscoring a performance that sits in the shadows of Bayona’s broader filmography. Netflix appears to be the real beneficiary of this campaign, achieving the number one spot in 67 countries during its debut week and becoming the Spanish-language film with the most views on the platform, estimated at over 86.1 million views in just 39 days, totaling around 209.4 million hours watched. The next challenge is to surpass the non-English film Troll as the most watched non-English title on the service. Notably, this momentum is far from improbable. The Oscar push provides a meaningful boost, and a surprising audience segment, the younger viewers, has shown renewed interest. The film has cultivated a strong fan base around several of its stars, helping it stay buoyant amid the ongoing flood of new releases on Netflix each week.
In reality, Netflix is steering the ship here. It has crafted its reach to become a global event, delivering the film to millions of households in unthinkable scale. The ability to reach potentially 260 million subscribers worldwide underpins the investment’s profitability, whether through retaining current subscribers or attracting new ones.
Prestige versus Reach
As a director of high stature, Bayona’s choice to partner with Netflix on the film’s distribution journey offers a rare blend of prestige and broad accessibility. The Snow Society delivers both the traditional festival-friendly recognition and the expansive reach enabled by streaming. Some observers will praise the model for keeping theatres in the loop, others may critique it for integrating Netflix into the equation. It is a debate with no easy answers. The industry has long accepted that streaming is part of the landscape, and the next challenge is to harmonize the best from both worlds to maximize a film’s potential. If prejudices fade and the idea of film consumption becomes more fluid rather than fixed, a sustainable path for both cinema and streaming seems within reach.
The exhibition sector has already acknowledged Netflix as a durable component of the ecosystem. The task ahead is to align the contributions of the two routes—the cinema and the platform—so that the full value of a film can be realized. Succeeding in this balance means recognizing that there is no single, correct way to experience a movie today, and that a future where both avenues coexist is not out of reach.
Netflix has grown its influence without depending on theater releases to propel popularity. It uses sophisticated algorithms and global reach to scale the impact of its titles in ways that traditional openings rarely match, creating opportunities territory by territory. The potential to connect with hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide forms the backbone of the investment’s long-term value, whether through customer retention or new sign-ups.
For a director like Bayona, distributing with Netflix opens doors to both prestige and access. The Snow Society embodies a dual model: the aura of a wide theatrical roll-out and the expansive, data-driven reach of streaming. Some will see the streaming partnership as a safeguard for clout and audience, while others might view it as a challenge to the traditional cinema-centered model. The industry has long accepted that Netflix is part of the landscape, and the next goal is to define how both cinema and streaming can contribute to a film’s commercial life. If biases give way and it becomes clear that viewing habits are diverse rather than monolithic, a durable, balanced future for both channels looks increasingly plausible.
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