Justice League officially flops. Only $94m opening week... Less than Iron Man 1 (2008) and GoTG

[Conz]

And for the record I will be seeing this today and I'm still reasonably pumped about it

 

[Bryan Danielson]

Marvel fans didn't have real issues with DC until the DCEU was coming about. The DC stans were feeling themselves but the Marvel contingent was telling them to slow down. They said DC doesn't need to follow Marvel's blueprint and didn't want to listen. We constantly had to hear them bytch about the fun, one liners, and all the marvel movie tropes.
Word got out that BVS was and they were losing their shyt. The movie came out, was , and the L's have been piling up since. The chickens have come home to roost and we're laughing at them. It's well deserved

The bold is nothing but th absolute truth and A LOT OF US been saying for years now.

It was fun and games when cats take shots about “villains, one liners, quips, humor, and etc and do it for months straight creating mad desperate “attention threads”

But the moment that (no pun intended) a little JUSTICE is served back all of a sudden this ain’t fair, this is a problem and bias bias bias.

Some of the same cats mad now were clowning other movies this summer calling them trash and flops (Or laughed/dapped/pos repped and didn’t have a problem with the guys doing that shyt)

Martha

 

[Norrin Radd]

Warner Bros. Faces A Possible $50M To $100M Loss On 'Justice League'

Warner Bros’ latest tentpole movie, Justice League, has stirred up lots of conversation these past few days, for its generally shabby reviews, the Great RottenTomatoes Tomatometer coverup and the lower-than-expected box office results. But for Warner Bros, there are really only two questions that ultimately matter:

1. Will Justice League generate an attractive risk-adjusted return on investment?
2. Has the movie done its job in setting the stage for the success of future Justice League movies like Aquaman, Cyborg and Justice League 2?

My answer to the second question is simply an emphatic no. I've written previously about Justice League’s impact on Aquaman.

I'll focus on the first question. Getting an estimate of Justice League’s returns at this early stage will require some extrapolation and assumptions based on industry norms.

I'll start by making a best guess at Justice League's ultimate revenues, costs and profits, beginning with the widely reported figure of $300 million in production costs and an estimated $150 million for global marketing. Then I'll compare the Justice League ROI to the results for other, comparable movies. This should be an empirically valid approach for assessing whether the film was a good investment for the studio, as defined by the first question above.

I should mention that as a former studio executive and current film finance consultant and producer, I have reasonably good qualifications for developing such projections. I should also point out, however, that with limited knowledge of the proprietary and confidential arrangements that Warner Bros has made with talent, producers and buyers of the film, the best I can offer here is an educated guess.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let's start with revenues. The current box office trajectory suggests a final domestic theatrical gross of around $235 million (that’s assuming a 2.45x multiplier on the $96 million first weekend gross, 2.45 being the median multiplier for DC’s prior 4 DCEU releases). Overseas I’m projecting a final international tally of around $400 million (assuming fairly generously that JL gets the same hefty 2.15x multiple on its $185 million opening weekend overseas that Batman v Superman (BvS) got on its first overseas weekend.

Adding the domestic and overseas numbers gets us a $635 million worldwide theatrical gross. If that number holds up it would mean that Justice League is the lowest-grossing movie among the five DCEU releases so far.

Of that $635 million in projected box office receipts, Warner Bros will get to keep around 52% of the domestic grosses, and a weighted average of around 38% of the foreign tally (that's 25% of the projected $90 million from China, and 42% of the aggregated grosses from all other overseas territories).

So that gets us to a sum of about $275 million in theatrical rentals going into Warner Bros' coffers. We can use this figure, along with some general Hollywood rules of thumb for projections, to estimate the ultimate revenues and costs for such additional lines of business as domestic and foreign video, TV and the like.

I'm going to estimate worldwide home entertainment, including subscription VOD and online sales, at $170 million. That's equal to 55% of the $310 million that Avengers: Age of Ultron took in home entertainment, against 45% of the latter picture's $1.4 billion worldwide box office figure. Global TV revenues should come in at about $100 million. Estimating merchandising revenue is tricky because the Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman franchises are already generating somewhere around $800 million to $1 billion in annual retail merchandise sales and probably close to $100 million a year net to Warner Bros, so it's anyone's guess as to how much incremental revenue, if any, Justice Leaguegenerates. Let's leave merchandise aside for the moment.

A few other esoteric revenue and expense items I can only guess at. Studio overhead fees and advertising overhead charges are usually factored in, and I’m going to estimate those at an additional $30 million coming back to Warner Bros.

So if we add up theatrical rentals with global home entertainment, TV and fees, we get to a net revenue figure of $575 million going to Warner Bros. Against that we deduct costs of $300 million for producing the movie, $150 million for marketing, $60 million for global home entertainment costs, $20 million for talent guild residuals and "off-the-tops" (release-related expenses), $20 million in interest expense and, let’s say, $50 million for talent participation to the director, producers, stars and others. People like Zack Snyder, Ben Affleck and producer Chuck Roven don't come cheap. I heard from one individual that talent participations aren’t being paid on Justice League until the studio reaches cash breakeven, but I haven’t been able to confirm that so I’ll leave the $50 million expense in the calculation.

Total estimated costs: $600 million. Deduct that from the $545 million in studio revenue and we wind up with a $55 million loss. Against Warners' $475 million in upfront production and marketing expenditures, that works out to a negative 12% ROI.

That 12% loss may look pretty bad, but it gets even worse. We need to remember that it takes years for all this money to flow into the studio's coffers. The $300 million in production funding is spent long before the movie's release, and the marketing money is also a big upfront cost. The theatrical rental revenue usually comes back inside of a year after the film's release, but home entertainment revenue can take several years to trickle in, and TV revenue years more.

All of this is before we count the studio's overhead costs, which if amortized against the picture would probably widen the Justice League loss by another $40 million. But for the sake of argument let's say that the incremental merchandise revenue I've temporarily set aside makes up half of that overhead cost, so the film's final loss works out to $75 million.

Finally, going back to that $150 million marketing expenditure, I know that the number is actually higher, but that Warner Bros’ marketing partners footed a big chunk of the bill. I’ll give the studio the benefit of the doubt and assume that its hard cash cost of marketing was $125 million. That brings the loss of the picture to $50 million.

That's the worst performance by far among when lined up against comparable recent films, as illustrated in the table below (the profit estimates come partially from Mike Fleming Jr.'s excellent analyses in Deadline Hollywood). Assuming my estimates for Justice League are in the right ballpark, then the film appears to have been a very bad investment for Warner Bros. Even if my loss estimates are off by $100 million and instead of losing $50 million the picture made $50 million in profit, it would still be the 19th worst performing picture on my 20-picture list.

Pacific Bridge Pictures
Source: Pacific Bridge Pictures and Deadline Hollywood analysis

A note about the 20 movies in the table: I chose them out of a field of three dozen superhero movies released in the past five years, primarily because these were the ones for which I had the most complete data. The others not on the chart include several hits like Marvel's The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, but overall they skew more toward less successful films like The Green Hornet, The Fantastic Four and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Even I'd had the full data for all the movies and I was able to include them, Justice League would still have fallen at the bottom of the pack, along with The Fantastic Four, which was reported in one article in Deadline to have lost $60 million.

None of this happens in a vacuum. The vast underperformance of Justice League will impact DC’s future releases like Aquaman, Shazam, and the Justice League and Wonder Woman sequels. It will also impact the way that studios look at and think about superhero pictures. It could even have a ripple effect on the upcoming Marvel movies.

Take a closer look at the top of the chart, where the most profitable superhero films are. Notice that two of the top five were produced by Fox at budgets under $100 million, and the top five averaged $150 million in cost. Now look at the bottom of the chart, where the worst financial performers are. All five cost $200 million and up to make, and they averaged $246 million in production costs. Note also that three of the fiver worst-performing superhero films were part of the Warner Bros. DC Extended Universe.

It's hard not to conclude from this that making tentpole superhero movies for under $100 million is smart and that in most cases making them for $200 million or more is pretty dumb.

 

[MenacingMonk]

Your mother is a jackass, you f@ggot ass bytch. Nyggas bringing up Jurassic Park as the measuring stick for a 2017 ensemble flick from DC when the only proven winners were BATMAN and Wonder Woman this whole time...lol. Like i said..should of made 150 mil but it didn't and thats that.

 

[David_TheMan]

WB president needs to be fired.
LIke I said before, that DC Films isn't a studio proper and they didn't reset when they got a new president, should tell you all yoou need to know why WB head needs to be fired.

 

[Shadow King]

I'm not going to let a flop opening or lukewarm word of mouth keep me from going to see this but I think overall DC has been too busy playing catch up with Marvel instead of making the movies they really want to make. Didn't they change directors and swap out scenes so the movie wouldn't be "too dark"? The same was done for SS but that movie didn't have the same expectations so when it was what it was it gave a type of moment. Plus a Joker+Harley Quinn stimulus package didn't hurt.

But the main thing I think they did wrong for JL was rushing it into their universe...you gave us one Superman movie 4 years ago, no Batman solo, a Bat-Supes collab, and a Wonder Woman solo. No true Superman sequel in sight, with Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg coming AFTER JL (though Cybor probably needs it). Marvel built their world so that when all 7 of the heroes united people was invested into how they came together. As my own example I might know a little bit more than most but between Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg, shyt even Wonder Woman, I couldn't name you 10 villains. And there's a lot of people more casual than I am so DC has done a poor job of building. If Justice League came out in 2020 this would be a whole different tune.

 

[Manuel Hot Pepper Lopez]

They shouldn't have left their biggest character out of the previews

 

[darryl]

They shouldn't have left their biggest character out of the previews

Biggest character? This ain't 1950. He isn't even the second biggest character

 

[wire28]

nikkas was saying spider-man flopped because now that marvel is taking point and it's a huge character, It should have done 1 billion It was the 2nd highest grossing spider-man to date fukk nikkas

4th highest grossing movie of 2017 but nikkas was saying but but not domestic like wonder woman and now with JL it's well it's doing good international

which way do you want it? pick one

You got a movie with 4 of DC biggest superheroes that can't even brake 100 mill. imagine an avengers movie that can't break 100 mil

Look at this IT fukking IT beat your ass

The haters was talkin mad shyt and the Clark Kents was letting it slide. Now they hella quiet. It's funny as hell

 

[wire28]

Warner Bros. Faces A Possible $50M To $100M Loss On 'Justice League'

:marvelpachaha:How you make a movie about the mutha fukkin JL and lose money :marvelpachaha:

 

[wire28]

Marvel fans didn't have real issues with DC until the DCEU was coming about. The DC stans were feeling themselves but the Marvel contingent was telling them to slow down. They said DC doesn't need to follow Marvel's blueprint and didn't want to listen. We constantly had to hear them bytch about the fun, one liners, and all the marvel movie tropes.
Word got out that BVS was and they were losing their shyt. The movie came out, was , and the L's have been piling up since. The chickens have come home to roost and we're laughing at them. It's well deserved

shytted on them

 

[Grand Eeezus Maxwell]

The bold is nothing but th absolute truth and A LOT OF US been saying for years now.

It was fun and games when cats take shots about “villains, one liners, quips, humor, and etc and do it for months straight creating mad desperate “attention threads”

But the moment that (no pun intended) a little JUSTICE is served back all of a sudden this ain’t fair, this is a problem and bias bias bias.

Some of the same cats mad now were clowning other movies this summer calling them trash and flops (Or laughed/dapped/pos repped and didn’t have a problem with the guys doing that shyt)

Martha

DC is so trash, bruh.

 

[Brehcepticon]

I read the marketing budget for this was as high as 200 mil That means Justice League would need to make a billion to break even

 

[Grand Eeezus Maxwell]

:marvelpachaha:How you make a movie about the mutha fukkin JL and lose money :marvelpachaha:

nikkaz managed to turn The Flash into some queer autistic nikka, and reimaged Mr. Seahorse as an aqua-biker.

 

[CookisaCac]

When you do - $70 million from the last movie, which was considered a disappointment financially... Yeah that's a flop. And BvS had no legs because of the bad work of mouth, same thing happening here. And let's not even compare it to the Avengers.. And Star Wars in 3 weeks about to crush the buildings.. Shyt might get ugly

Last movie was wonder woman and that was $103 which is barely over this. But that movie is good right?