10 Reasons for JUSTICE LEAGUE's Disappointing $94 Million U.S. Debut
Warner Bros. and DC Film’s
Justice League made its long-awaited launch last week and it
debut to a dismal $96 million at the U.S. box office. The film was tracking to open at $110-$120 million last October. Cut to the present, it couldn’t even crack the $100 million ceiling. Compared to
Man of Steel ($116M),
Batman v Superman ($166M),
Suicide Squad ($133M) and
Wonder Woman ($103M),
Justice League has the lowest opening weekend for a DCEU film ever. This would be unfathomable five years ago.
When
The Avengers (2012) was released and everybody was losing their shit and declaring it to be the best comic book movie ever, the film had a whopping $207 million U.S. opening weekend and ended its theatrical run with $1.5 billion worldwide. People back then were saying that a live-action
Justice League movie had a strong chance of beating
The Avengers’ box office records, after all DC’s A-team was more popular and more well-known than Marvel’s “second-tier heroes.”
So who or what is to blame for the poor box office performance despite the promise of DC’s most iconic superheroes all gathered in one movie. Putting aside the quality of the actual film, below is a list of reasons that contributed either in a major way or small way to why
Justice League flopped at the box office.
1. Post-Traumatic Snyder Disorder
A lot of people found
Batman v Superman relentlessly bleak, joyless, overlong, disjointed and crushed by its grim and incoherent narrative. So when they learn that
Justice League is from the same director that made
BvS, the thought of revisiting Snyder’s world seemed so unappealing and tedious to them. When they see the dark aesthetics and slow-motion action in the
JL trailers, they conclude that
JL will be more of the same as
BvS.
With
JL’s disappointing box office results, the general public is basically saying with their dollars that they don’t want to see a Zack Snyder handling the DCEU. The public actually told this to Warner Bros. with the poor box office performance of
BvS last year but the studio refused to listen and now they’re paying the price… again.
2. Batman v Superman was already a Justice League movie
The reason why the gathering of DC’s most popular superheroes didn’t feel quite as special in
Justice League because WB already spoiled that moment with
Batman v Superman where the Trinity (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) met for the first time and battled Doomsday. The $166 million opening
BvS received would have belonged to
JL if the Trinity didn’t meet already. Sure,
JL featured Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg joining the team but the casuals didn’t really care much for these “2nd-rate characters” since WB never gave them a solo movie prior to this, hence, the public didn’t really know them or cared much about them.
3. Rotten Tomatoes "cover-up" and score
Rotten Tomatoes has become a very popular review aggregation website to the general public. So when RT withheld its score for
Justice League to promote their Facebook show
See It/Skip It (they also withheld their scores for other movies even before this), the public mistakenly thought it meant that
JL must be really bad due to the embargo since Warner Bros. has a minority stake in RT. That incident and along with the actual RT score of 40% discouraged a lot of moviegoers to seeing
BvS.
4. Poor word of mouth from the general public
Even if you take out RT and the critics out of the equation, the public word of mouth has been mixed. Half that have seen
Justice League thought it was good but not great, and half thought it was just above average or decent. Not exactly encouraging to hear for those undecided moviegoers, nor is it compelling enough to make them buy a ticket.
Five years ago when
The Avengers came out, posters were singing its praises and raining down 9 and 10 star ratings like they were in a strip club. As of this writing, there’s barely any 9s and zero 10s so far in the
Justice League ratings poll.
5. Marketing too early causing Justice League fatigue
To assure the public that
Justice League was not going to be as dark and gloomy as
Batman v Superman, Warner Bros. invited the media on June 2016 for a sneak preview of a comical meeting between Bruce Wayne and Barry Allen and a scene where the team, except for Flash, disappears on Commissioner Gordon. WB then released the first official
Justice League trailer to the general public at Comic-Con on July 2016, one year and four months before the film's release date. Since then, the public has been steadily bombarded with promos for the next 16 months which could have caused a
Justice League fatigue among moviegoers.
This is one of the problems with Warner Bros. handling of the DCEU, they’re always reacting, sometimes over-reacting, and don’t have enough overriding vision. Let’s take a look at how Marvel Studios is handling their marketing for
Avengers: Infinity War. Aside from the sizzle reel shown to the Comic-Con attendants, they still haven’t released a single official trailer for
Infinity War yet and that movie comes out in just five months.
6. No Superman in promos
Superman is noticeably absent from most of the marketing promos and posters for
Justice League. I actually applaud them for not spoiling Superman’s return, even though everybody who followed the movie’s progress knows he is in there. But the fact is that the presence of Superman in the trailers and posters could have enticed casual viewers to go watch the movie and give
JL an extra $10-$15 million boost to its opening weekend. Not really important but the team photos from the posters sorely lacks the vibrant blue color from Superman’s costume (plus they badly need a bright green color from Green Lantern or Martian Manhunter).
8. Thor: Ragnarok stealing Justice League's thunder
Thor: Ragnarok came out 2 weeks ago and, not only received tons of praises from critics and audience alike, but debut to a surprising $122 million ($28 million more than
Justice League). If somebody said last year that
Ragnarok would defeat
JL at the box office, that person would be laughed at. A
Justice League insider tells THR, "If a B character from Marvel shut downs and outperforms the A team from DC, that’s an embarrassment." Indeed.
Ragnarok also earned $21.7 million on its 3rd weekend and possibly diverting ticket sales from
JL. It’s also possible that casual moviegoers’ superhero fix have been met with
Ragnarok and they’re no longer interested in seeing another superhero movie for the time being.
It's funny looking back at an old interview Snyder made back in 2008 where he made this foot-in-the-mouth statement,
"The Marvel universe has gone nuts; we’re going to have a fricking Captain America movie if we’re not careful. Thor, too! We’re on our second Hulk movie. And Iron Man — $300 million domestic box office on a second tier superhero!" And this one in 2011,
"I’m like, really? Thor? Thor has a movie? [Laughter.] Really? I mean, come on."
7. Steven Chbosky’s Wonder
Steven Chboksy’s drama
Wonder starring Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson earned an impressive $27 million to land No. 2 at the weekend box office, stealing some of the
Justice League’s ticket sales. Per THR, Lionsgate's marketing team aggressively targeted elementary schools, a move that is paying off, with higher-than-usual group ticket sales. RJ Palacio’s New York Times bestseller tells the story of a child with Treacher Collins Syndrome trying to fit in at a new school.
Wonder is produced by Marvel Studios. (No it’s not)
9. Reports of post-production troubles
Due to a family tragedy, Snyder left
Justice League on May 2017 and Warner Bros. assigned Joss Whedon, who was already brought in by the studio months ago to rework on the script, to finish post-production and film the reshoots. On July 2017, word got out that the massive reshoots cost $25 million (the average reshoot for this type of movie cost around $6 to $10 million). Henry Cavill's mustache was also an issue as he was filming
Mission: Impossible 6 at the same time as the
Justice League reshoots. Paramount refused to let Cavill shave his mustache, so WB had to spend millions just to digitally remove the facial hair in post.
Soon, reports came in that WB has neutered Snyder and will no longer be a major creative influence for the DCEU. Near the
JL release date, the negative buzz on Henry Cavill's CGI'd mouth began to circulate. All of this behind-the-scenes post-production drama and negativity could have influenced moviegoers into thinking that
JL was going to be a disaster and not worth it to see at the cinemas.
10. Seventh member was deleted from final cut
One of the reasons for
Justice League’s stumble at the box office is the removal of all the scenes of the seventh member - Steve - in the actual movie despite being heavily promoted in their posters
[1] [2], cover books
[3], behind-the-scenes photo
[4] and they even showed a clip
[5] of this member in action. Snyder even teased Steve way back in 2015 when he tweeted a
Justice League image with the slogan
“Unite the Seven.” Such a shame, I for one would have liked to see war criminal and Marvel turncoat Steve kick some parademon butts.
Note: This might be merged with the official thread after a while.
