The picture is looking pretty bleak for “Justice League.” Yesterday, the final weekend box office numbers came in, and they were even lower than projected, with the superhero team-up movie earning $94 million domestic over the weekend. It’s the lowest grossing debut of any DC Films effort to date, and for comparison sake, Marvel‘s “The Avengers” launched with $207 million in 2012. The main thing you need to know is: “Justice League” was expensive to make and market, and now it’s looking like it’s going to be lose the studio quite a bit of cash.
Forbes has crunched the numbers — seriously, they go pretty mind-numbingly deep on merchandise potential and international receipts and all that stuff — and Warner Bros. may be facing a $50 to $100 million loss on “Justice League.” Essentially, with the movie costing $300 million in production costs, plus adding another $150 million for marketing, it already puts “Justice League” in a deep hole. Deadline recently reported that the movie needs to earn $700 million to $750 million worldwide to turn any kind of profit. However, projections put the final tally around $635 million.
Ouch.
There’s a possibility that “Justice League” could limp to break even, but bottom line: this is not a smash hit or even an acceptable result by any measure. No matter how you twist or cook the numbers, this is an ugly, financial faceplant.
We could speculate about why audiences stayed away — did Warner Bros. repeat the “Blade Runner 2049” marketing mistake of keeping things too secret by not putting Superman in the promos at all? However, at the end of the day, audiences simply want good movies. Frankly, the stink coming off “Justice League” had been floating for months, and the critical notices put the nail in the coffin, try as they did to keep them under embargo as long as possible.
The big question is what this means for the future of Warner Bros. and DC Films, but clearly, things can’t continue as they are.