'Justice League' suffers worst opening of any DC movie

Ben Arnold
·Contributor

Following a pretty robust battering for Justice League at the hands of the critics (that’s a 40% ‘fresh’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes), it looks like its fortunes at the box office aren’t looking too promising either.

It’s had the lowest-grossing opening of any movie in the DC extended universe, failing to reach analyst’s hopes of a $110 million bow with a haul of just $96 million in the US.

For some perspective, that’s behind DC’s last effort Wonder Woman and eighth in the top 10 highest-opening weekends of the year.

Once you add on its worldwide haul, its box office fortunes perk up slightly, with $281 million (around £211 million) made in all, but it doesn’t take long for the shine to wear off that figure.

As far as recent blockbusters goes, that’s a notably underwhelming figure.

In the US, that makes it the 53rd highest-grossing opening weekend ever. Even if you add on the worldwide gross, it still comes in at a disappointing 24th place.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which was mauled even more severely by critics, did considerably better, making $422.5 million in its opening weekend around the world.

In the UK, though it landed at number one in the box office charts, it only just squeaked in ahead of Paddington 2’s gross of £6.58 million, making £7.26 million.

That puts it just ahead of Wonder Woman‘s UK opening weekend of £6.18 million, but well behind the critically hammered Suicide Squad, which made £11.25 million.

For even more context, ‘Avengers Assemble’ opened to £15.78 million in 2012.

It heaps further woe on a project which, according to Variety, may need to bring in as much as $600 million in order to break even, after its sturdy $250 million production budget, plus all the money spent on marketing and promotion.

There’s even a fan petition (with over 56,000 signatures at the time of publishing and counting), which is calling for Zack Snyder’s director’s cut to be released – Joss Whedon took over from Snyder when he had to quit the production following the tragic death of his daughter.

It’s also calling for Danny Elfman’s score to be scrapped, and Junkie XL’s to be reinstated for the DVD release.

It’s out now across the UK.

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