‘Justice League’ Is Officially the Lowest-Grossing DCEU Movie
Four months after hitting theaters in the U.S., Justice League has ended its worldwide box office run as the lowest-grossing film in the DC Extended Universe franchise. The Franken-child of directors Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon was poorly received by critics and left audiences feeling mostly underwhelmed— inspiring a legion of disappointed Snyder super-fans to launch their own website demanding the release of (what they believe to be) the superior cut of the film.
The final box office numbers are in, and although Justice League made more money than three generations of your family tree will ever see in its lifetime, the total gross supports the idea that WB’s answer to the Avengers is the worst DCEU movie to date. Yes, even worse than Suicide Squad. Like, if you were running a bracket for the worst of the DCEU, most people would probably prefer Jared Leto’s Juggalo-Joker to Henry Cavill’s airbrushed-to-bejesus upper lip. I’m just saying.
Here’s the final ranking of DCEU films based on worldwide box office grosses, with Batman v Superman sitting at number one:
- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – $873,634,919
- Wonder Woman – $821,847,012
- Suicide Squad – $746,846,894
- Man of Steel – $668,045,518
- Justice League – $647,924,295
As DC Films seems to have (finally) begun to learn, quality is more important than quantity, and it doesn’t matter how many of these movies you greenlight before having even a smidgen of a blueprint in place, or how many superheroes you stuff into one movie — it’s not going to make a lick of difference if your characters and worlds aren’t fully developed and thought-out. Before any of you hop on Twitter to @ me about what a jerk I am, please know that I’ve loved Batman since I was old enough to talk (I even have a regrettable Batman tattoo). I care about (most of) these characters. I want these to be good movies.
That said, it’s a little surprising that Wonder Woman is in second place on the final box office ranking. But we were all pretty optimistic about Batman v Superman. Those were simpler times. Before we knew better. And now we know better, which may account for why Justice League is sitting at the bottom.
Recent changes behind the scenes, which probably won’t begin to take effect until after Aquaman, have renewed our optimism. Maybe Justice League will ultimately become DC’s version of Friday Night Lights Season 2 — it’s a thing that happened, and it wasn’t entirely awful, but we don’t really need to talk about it ever again.