Netflix took the movie world by surprise when they not only released a trailer for The Cloverfield Paradox during the Super Bowl, but they dropped the film on their streaming service immediately after (read our review).

Variety reports that, per Nielsen’s estimates, the movie notched 2.8 million U.S. viewers in the first three days after its surprise post-Super Bowl release on Feb. 4, but the total audience grew to 5.0 million over a seven-day period.

That’s compared with 11 million U.S. viewers who watched Netflix’s Bright during its first three days of release, according to Nielsen (which did not provide seven-day figures for that title). According to Netflix, in the first month after the Dec. 22 release, Bright had become one of Netflix’s most-viewed original titles ever.

Netflix reportedly paid Paramount Pictures more than $50 million to rights to the film, which previously carried the title God Particle, and paid somewhere in the $5M range for the Super Bowl spot.

While it’s being painted as a failure, let’s take a more objective look at things. Bright cost Netflix $90M, while The Cloverfield Project was $55. Also, Netflix didn’t have to go through the nightmare to produce Cloverfield, which was delivered to the streaming service completed and ready to go.

Let’s also look at it from a money-making standpoint. 100 million people watch the Super Bowl. If only 1% of them were to subscribe to Netflix, that’s roughly 1M new subscribers. If the numbers hold true, that would mean Netflix could make $100M more per year by pulling off this stunt. We aren’t talking about single ticket buyers here, we’re talking about subscribers. Even if these numbers are less than expected, it’s hard to call it a disappointment or failed experiment. If anything, they just paved the way for the future.