Justice league box office: What went wrong

[Colossus1980]

As they watch some of these movies, including ones they were involved with themselves, they are flabbergasted by these claims that a movie cost $100 million or even $200 million to make. Most of them say they cannot see how any of these movies cost more than half or less than half of the claims.

In the opinion of many of these people, what's really happening is the same as most big businesses, that more and more of the budget is really just being funneled into the bank accounts of executives in charge or right back into the business. [Here, Hatch went through the motions of folding money and putting it into his pocket to indicate where he thinks a lot of this money is really going].

When I see all the names involved in the end credits I can definitely believe the $200M+ budgets for movies. So many people are involved in making these movies the payroll is just insane. Sure not everyone works the entire filming but a few grand there, few grand here, multiple by maybe thousands of behind the scene employees. Yes I can see it adding up quick. But I'm sure some execs pocket a few million for themselves.

[Colossus1980]

I have heard people bring this up before about other movies. I forget which ones but the budget definitely wasn't for the film lol

I look at films that don't involve any CGI, big action sequences, or several popular actors/actresses and I wonder the same thing.

[AJBopp]

I remember seeing or reading something on Cleopatra. At the time Fox was near bankruptcy and this was basically the only movie in production. The company's solvency depended on this being huge at the box office.

But, since there were no other films in production, everything was being expensed to it. The director, I believe, was quoted as saying that somewhere there was a studio executive buying a Korean hooker and expensing it to Cleopatra.

Not that that sort off thing really happened, but in general that is why it was believed to be such an expensive movie. Things were being billed to it because there was nothing else in production to bill them to.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

I hear this a lot. People think just because Marvel did it that way they assume everyone else needs to do it the same way. But what works for Marvel isn't always going to work for everyone else. I think just
the opposite is the case. I think the problem with Justice League was Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad coming before it. Even Man of Steel. The poor reception of those movies is what tanked
Justice League. If Justice League had come out first I think it would have done a lot better. In fact having a movie with all the characters in it first paves the way for solo movies of each character. You got to
meet them in Justice League, now here is their story. It was sort of how Wonder Woman was introduced. You got to meet her in BvS, then you got her story.Plus we have been overloaded with CGI by now
and have become jaded. I think if JL had come out first people would have been blown away by the CGI. It's what made the first Star Wars and Avatar work, people had never seen effects like that before.

Marvel did it a certain way because the core characters they had to play with were not as well known as the core Justice League characters (Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman/Flash) and the characters Marvel dealt to other studios (Spider-Man/X-Men/FF).

Do you really need a solo Superman or Batman or Wonder Woman or Flash or Cyborg or Aquaman movie to lead into Justice League?

[AJBopp]

Marvel did it a certain way because the core characters they had to play with were not as well known as the core Justice League characters (Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman/Flash) and the characters Marvel dealt to other studios (Spider-Man/X-Men/FF).

Do you really need a solo Superman or Batman or Wonder Woman or Flash or Cyborg or Aquaman movie to lead into Justice League?

Given the way they chose to go with the character of Superman, especially...yes, we really did need a solo Superman film first. That Superman character is entirely unknown to the world at large.

[80sbaby]

Marvel did it a certain way because the core characters they had to play with were not as well known as the core Justice League characters (Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman/Flash) and the characters Marvel dealt to other studios (Spider-Man/X-Men/FF).

Do you really need a solo Superman or Batman or Wonder Woman or Flash or Cyborg or Aquaman movie to lead into Justice League?

If you want the audience to actually care about these versions of those characters? Yes, you do.

[Forseti]

What you absolutely don't want to do is kick off with movies that sour the audience to the characters. Like BvS.

[titanfan]

What you absolutely don't want to do is kick off with movies that sour the audience to the characters. Like BvS.

Yup, that's the risk there too. JL would have absolutely been better if it was just a standalone movie.

[Powerboy]

When I see all the names involved in the end credits I can definitely believe the $200M+ budgets for movies. So many people are involved in making these movies the payroll is just insane. Sure not everyone works the entire filming but a few grand there, few grand here, multiple by maybe thousands of behind the scene employees. Yes I can see it adding up quick. But I'm sure some execs pocket a few million for themselves.

There were always this many people involved in making movies. The only difference is that, under the current rules, they have to list every single person in the closing credits. There are some exceptions for some people being listed as part of a group such as the Special Effects team. They never used to have to list anybody except the main people. It's why three minute long closing credits are now ten minutes sometimes.

Interesting figures here

https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/budgets/all

including this opening sentence:

"Budget numbers for movies can be both difficult to find and unreliable. Studios and film-makers often try to keep the information secret and will use accounting tricks to inflate or reduce announced budgets."

There's some more information here

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-br...Hollywood-film

The problem seems to be things like what you count as costs of making the movie. Do you count the salaries of the director, writer, actors, etc.? A lot of things can count to inflate the official cost for promo purposes. You can throw in promos and all sorts of things that are not directly the cost of making the movie.

There's supposedly an interview with a screen writer back in the 1990s who wrote the script for a major movie and made a deal that he would take no salary but would be paid based on the profits of the movie. The movie was huge
and made lots of money- except that, officially, it didn't. On the books, it lost money. Yet they wanted to do a sequel and wanted him to write it to which he responded, "Oh, in good conscience, I couldn't possibly cheat you by writing a sequel to a movie that lost so much money."

Whether that's true or not, those articles clearly show there's a lot of jury-rigging to make movie budgets look as large or small as studios want.

[Powerboy]

Marvel did it a certain way because the core characters they had to play with were not as well known as the core Justice League characters (Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman/Flash) and the characters Marvel dealt to other studios (Spider-Man/X-Men/FF).

Do you really need a solo Superman or Batman or Wonder Woman or Flash or Cyborg or Aquaman movie to lead into Justice League?

Superman and Batman, no, although you might want to have those solo movies to make it clear who these people are in your version. What if their only knowledge of Superman is Smallville?

But there's also the emotional connection. It's more than just generally knowing who the characters are. It's making people interested in seeing each of them individually and then teaming them up which is what Marvel did. Batman and Superman have had lots of live action exposure though on television for Superman in recent years. Wonder Woman hasn't had a live action version since the 1970s. Cyborg? Who? [I know but I'm talking about the general live action audience]. Aquaman is just a name for most people, that famous superhero guy that I actually know nothing about but I've heard the name and he's an underwater dude, obviously. The Flash? Well, yeah, there was that 1990 show and the current show so the Flash is a known quantity.

But what you want is movies that make people really excited about this team-up, not movies that have made the majority of the potential audience so fed up with the whole thing that they have no interest in sitting through another two hours of this and assume that's what it will be. Truth to tell, I think having some of the CW characters "port" in from the CW realities would have generated more interest.

[Osiris-Rex]

When I see all the names involved in the end credits I can definitely believe the $200M+ budgets for movies. So many people are involved in making these movies the payroll is just insane. Sure not everyone works the entire filming but a few grand there, few grand here, multiple by maybe thousands of behind the scene employees. Yes I can see it adding up quick. But I'm sure some execs pocket a few million for themselves.

It almost seems like the list the guy that fetches the donuts in the movie credits. I guess they can list everyone because they have no real time limit in running the credits. I'd imagine an effects heavy TV show
like Flash, Supergirl, The Orville, that cost far less to make, probably has far more people involved than their credits list at the end of the show, but they don't have 10 minutes to run the credits.

If you want the audience to actually care about these versions of those characters? Yes, you do.

People cared about Wonder Woman after BvS even though Wonder Woman didn't get a solo movie first. Same with Affleck's Batman. People didn't really care about Superman even though he got a solo movie first.
I don't think JL failed because no one got to know Aquaman, Flash, Cyborg first. If anything JL made people more eager for Aquaman's solo movie.

[GhostPirate]

If you want the audience to actually care about these versions of those characters? Yes, you do.

Good writing, character development, acting and general movie construction gets people to care about new versions of characters, not necessarily having to see them in their own solo feature. Guardians of the Galaxy and even the X-Men are prime examples of this, and both feature characters much less popular and widely known than the core JL lineup.

[AJBopp]

It almost seems like the list the guy that fetches the donuts in the movie credits. I guess they can list everyone because they have no real time limit in running the credits.

they list everyone because the unions have properly insisted on it, for the most part.

[Rincewind]

Good writing, character development, acting and general movie construction gets people to care about new versions of characters, not necessarily having to see them in their own solo feature. Guardians of the Galaxy and even the X-Men are prime examples of this, and both feature characters much less popular and widely known than the core JL lineup.

But "good writing, character development, acting, and general movie construction" all take time for each character. When you do an ensemble movie that introduces multiple new characters, you have to use screen time to establish each one. If the heroes have already had a solo movie, then most of that work is already done and the audience is invested in the characters before the team movie starts. That gives you more time to set up the villain, plot, character interactions, and other fun stuff.

Marvel may not have thought of this leading up to the Avengers, but that is the result. All of the heroes, the villain, and some of the supporting characters had all been introduced in previous movies. Hawkeye had the least development going into the first Avengers and he was also the character worst served.

Guardians of the Galaxy has characters that have a much simpler backstory and motivations. And they much more similar than the Avengers characters.

The X-Men movies are notorious for only focusing on a few characters and having the rest as wallpaper. Ask fans of the X-Men comics how happy they are with the big screen version of Storm or Cyclops.

[Agent Z]

edited post.