Posted in: Movies | Tagged: box office, dc, dceu, HRL, justice league, Release the Snyder Cut!, Warner Bros

Everyone Was Wrong About Justice League's Box Office Take; It Was Actually Lower

Published Mon, 20 Nov 2017 11:27:05 -0600

Last updated Wed, 14 Feb 2018 07:49:39 -0600

A lot was said over the weekend about Justice League, and how its estimated $96 million domestic box office take opening weekend was a massive disappointment. The film failed to meet even its own adjusted expectations of a $110 million, and ended up with the lowest domestic opening weekend of any DCEU film. All of this was on top of a 40% Rotten Tomatoes score and mixed to negative reviews, except for the reviews from a few more positive critics like DC Comics co-publisher Jim Lee or the DC-loving mayor of Long Beach, California.

But what if all of that was wrong? What if we were basing these perceptions on incorrect estimates?

The final official tally for Justice League's opening weekend has arrived, and it turns out that we all made a big mistake: we weren't being harsh enough.

It looks like Justice League's box office earnings sputtered to a halt at $94 million, $2 million less than originally estimated. The final disappointment caps a weekend of misery for DCEU fans, who have tried to pin the blame on everyone from Zack Snyder to Joss Whedon to Warner Bros to critics to Henry Cavill's missing mustache.

Now that the dust is settled, it looks like Justice League didn't do as bad as we all initially thought. It actually did slightly worse. And with competition in the form of Disney's Coco and Star Wars: The Last Jedi coming in the next month, Justice League is unlikely to break a billion dollars internationally.

What effect will that have on the future of the DCEU as a franchise? It's hard to say. But one lesson we should take away from this is that things are never as bad as they seem. Sometimes, they're even worse.