Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Entertainment
  3. News

‘Justice League’ limps to box office win with worst debut in franchise history

Rick Marshall
By

Justice League Snyder Cut
Image used with permission by copyright holder
The long-awaited premiere of Warner Bros. Pictures’ live-action superhero team-up film Justice League was anything but super, and the underachieving film paired its poor early reviews with an even more underwhelming opening weekend at the box office.

The $96 million debut for Justice League in U.S. theaters is the lowest of any film in WB’s cinematic universe based on DC Comics characters, and well below the early projections that had it raking in at least $120 million from Thursday’s “preview” screenings and the three-day weekend. Given that the film was intended to be WB’s equivalent to The Avengers, uniting all of the studio’s primary superhero characters on the same screen for a joint adventure, its debut was particularly bad and will likely lead to some hard questions about future projects that were announced but had yet to begin production.

Recommended Videos

For reference, The Avengers currently holds the record for the biggest opening weekend of all time for a superhero movie with its $207.4 million debut in 2012. Marvel Studios’ next team-up film, 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, has the second-biggest opening weekend of all time for superhero movies with $191.2 million.

Related
# Title  Weekend    U.S. Total   Worldwide Total 
1. Justice League $96M $96M $281.5M
2. Wonder $27M $27M $27M
3. Thor: Ragnarok $21.7M $247.3M $738M
4. Daddy’s Home 2 $14.8M $50.5M $51M
5. Murder on the Orient Express $13.8M $51.7M $148.2M
6. The Star $10M $10M $10M
7. A Bad Moms Christmas $6.8M $50.9M $77.5M
8. Lady Bird $2.5M $4.7M $4.7M
9. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri $1.1M $1.5M $1.5M
10. Jigsaw $1M $36.4M $88.8M

As for the rest of the weekend’s top 10 films, family-friendly drama Wonder surprised many box-office pundits with its impressive $27 million debut and A+ grade on CinemaScore (as well as an 84-percent positive review on RottenTomatoes), while faith-based animated feature The Star finished in sixth place with a respectable $10 million.

Circling back to Justice League, though, it’s worth noting that the reviews for the film weren’t actually the worst of WB’s superhero cinematic universe so far.

The 39-percent positive rating that Justice League currently holds on RottenTomatoes is more favorable than that of 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (27 percent) and Suicide Squad (26 percent), and its B+ grade on audience polling site CinemaScore is better than Batman v Superman (B) and on par with Suicide Squad (B+). Overall, the critical reception to Justice League puts it right in the middle, set between the positively received Wonder Woman and Man of Steel, and the two aforementioned films that weren’t received as kindly.

Of the five films in the studio’s “DC Extended Universe” franchise, Wonder Woman still reigns supreme for critical reception with 92-percent positive reviews from critics and an A grade.

With Wonder Woman the only bona fide critical and commercial success for the DCEU, the sequel to that film is certain to happen, and the studio has already finished production on its Aquaman solo movie for a premiere in December 2018. The fate of the rest of the studio’s projects isn’t as certain, even with Shazam! finalizing deals with its stars recently and some buzz about the Batman and Flash solo movies.

This upcoming week’s biggest release is the Disney-Pixar animated feature Coco, which is expected to have a big debut in theaters over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. How Justice League and Wonder fare over the extended week in competition with the latest Pixar project will likely say a lot about both films’ futures.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Rick Marshall
Rick Marshall
Former Digital Trends Contributor
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
What’s new on Netflix and what’s leaving in October 2023
Omar Sy in promo art for Lupin Part 3.

No one can accuse Netflix of resting on its laurels in October. Almost everything new on Netflix in the next 31 days is very exciting, including new episodes of Lupin, the premiere of The Fall of the House of Usher, the new season of Big Mouth, documentaries about David Beckham and Uber as well as a whole lot more.

Movie lovers also have a lot to look forward to, including the Netflix premiere of Dune (2021), as well as the return of some old favorites like Silver Linings Playbook, American Beauty, Catch Me If You Can, It Follows, Scarface, and the first four Mission: Impossible films. That broad selection of newly arrived movies from the last three decades has a little bit of something for everyone. And that should make for some very happy subscribers this month.

Read more
Everything leaving Netflix in October 2023
Daniel Wu and Emily Beecham in Into the Badlands.

In the month of October, there aren't a lot of films and TV series leaving Netflix. But you may miss some of the movies that are going out the door, like the first three Expendables films, Cliffhanger, Coming to America, Reservoir Dogs, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. We're also partial towards Into the Badlands, a series that ran for three seasons on AMC. Netflix is the only streaming home that Into the Badlands has ever had, and it's unclear if the show will be moving to AMC+ or if it will simply be sent into oblivion without a digital afterlife.

There's always something new on Netflix throughout the month, so the sting of losing these films and shows isn't too bad. But you've already paid for your monthly Netflix subscription, and you deserve to get the most out of it. Are you really going to let some of your potential favorites exit Netflix without giving them one last view? There are 31 days to catch everything leaving Netflix in October, and that's more than enough time to watch what you want to see. As always, our picks for the month are in bold.

Read more
5 great movies starring wrestlers you have to watch right now
Roddy Piper in They Live.

Wrestlers crossing over to Hollywood is not a new phenomenon, although modern stars like Dwayne Johnson and John Cena have had a lot more success than most of their fellow wrestlers-turned-actors. But there just aren't that many great movies starring wrestlers, at least with wrestlers in the leading roles. For example, former WWE star Dave Bautista proved that he had comedy chops in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, and he also had a great (yet brief) serious turn in Blade Runner 2049. However, none of Bautista's solo movies have really played to his strengths as an actor, and they've been largely forgettable.

There have even been a handful of great movies about wrestling, most notably The Wrestler and Fighting With My Family, that featured non-wrestlers playing wrestlers. But for our list of the five great movies starring wrestlers that you need to watch, we decided to stay away from movies about wrestling. And the wrestlers in these movies helped bring them to the next level.
The Princess Bride (1987)

Read more