Warner Bros. faces a crossroads when it comes to the DCEU in the wake of Justice League‘s disastrous $94M domestic debut, which happens to be the lowest of any DCEU movie. The biggest problem is how expensive the whole endeavor turned out to be. Maybe if Zack Snyder’s version didn’t need additional reshoots by Joss Whedon things might have been manageable, but that’s not how things shook out, and Warner Bros. may be about to take a huge hit.
Forbes broke out their calculator and figured out the numbers, and it doesn’t look good. They take the reported $300M production budget along with the $150M in marketing costs, and estimate a $50M-$100M loss when all is added up. Oof. Okay, that doesn’t sound so bad, right? Well…remember, Warner Bros. doesn’t keep everything the film earns, and Deadline estimates Justice League needs to hit $700M+ just to turn a profit. Okay, that’s not so bad, right? Well…the site estimates the film will only hit $635M worldwide overall.
Now, I’m no economist but $635M seems really low, especially with the film already at $278M after just one week. And I expect there will be a considerable return on merchandising, which Forbes does go into and I think underplays. But no matter how you slice it, there shouldn’t need to be this much work for the film to just break even. It should already be a given.
