Posted on 11/18/2017 7:08:57 AM PST by Simon Green
Justice League‘s Friday, coming off a solid $13 million Thursday, is landing at the high end of its midday estimate with $38.4M, however, Warner Bros./DC’s superhero ensemble is falling well short of $100M with an industry estimate of $93.5M over three-days, quite far from tracking’s $110M-$120M projection.
How dismal is this?
This event movie at a reported estimated production cost of $300M was ten years in the making, and was intended to be the pinnacle for the Warner Bros./DC universe introducing new characters such as The Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman who could hold their own franchise weight with their own solo outings. But an opening that’s 44% lower than Batman v. Superman‘s $166M opening? Ouch.
On a bit of an upside, audiences seem to be enjoying Justice League more than critics’ 39% Rotten Tomatoes score: CinemaScore crowds gave Justice League a B+, the same as Suicide Squad and an improvement on BvS‘s ‘B’. CinemaScore’s audience sentiment jives with what PostTrak saw on Thursday night with a four-out-of-five star score, 85% overall positive and high 69% definite recommend. Females (42%) liked Justice League more than men (58%), giving it an A- to their B+. Under 25 (31%) gave the super friends movie an A-. Man, if they could only show up en masse now.
Surely anything under $100M isn’t making Warner Bros brass happy: This is DC’s Avengers. It’s the zenith of their comic book movie universe. Should Justice League find an extra set of super powers this weekend, and re-power to $100M, it’s still hard to jump up and down since Justice League before P&A cost double what Wonder Woman did ($149M) with the Joss Whedon reshoots, etc.
Last time with BvS, fanboys and critics dinged that movie for Zack Snyder’s less meat, no filling visualist style coupled with that pic’s moody tone and tiresome running time. After the tepid response to BvS (the movie was profitable at $105M+), why did Warner Bros. have Snyder and the pic’s screenwriter Chris Terrio go through the motions all over again on Justice League? Warner Bros. brass fielded some of fans’ concerns: Justice League is shorter at two hours (to BvS’ 2 1/2 hour run time) and has more humor thanks to The Flash and Aquaman due to Avengers helmer Joss Whedon stepping in for Snyder after the director had to step away due to an unfortunate tragedy. Despite the promise that Whedon might bring, there was no way he could reshoot the entire movie. As one rival studio executive told Deadline, “I’ve never heard of a director completely changing the DNA of a movie when he’s called in for reshoots. That’s inherent in the script from the onset.”
Bingo. The addition of AA hire 'Cyborg' didn't help, although few will admit it. Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter were founding JLA members...where were they?
Meh.
Go see “Only the Brave”. If that doesn’t get picked as Best Picture next spring, sum ting wong.
We saw it today, the movie was well done, plot was solid, enough character development and back story on the bad guy/threat for the audience. Just as good if not better than most of the predictable schlock MARVEL/Disney has been peddling and definitely better than Thor Ragnock, which we also saw.
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