Discovery Wants To Revitalize Superman

[Vakanai]

I know we're in post-COVID, and CPI conversions aren't 100% appropriate, but Man of Steel's $291 M domestic and $668 M worldwide in 2013 comes out to roughly $359 M and $824 M, respectively, in 2022 dollars. If Man of Steel was disappointing enough that they had to turn on the Bat signal, I'm not sure we can call The Batman's $369 M and $765 M a massive success.

EDIT: On second thought, I forgot to look at the budgets. Man of Steel cost $277 M in 2022 dollars, compared to The Batman's $200 M, so this isn't apples and oranges. Maybe WB just didn't market this movie as hard and are fine with a smaller box office...

It's not apples to oranges indeed. Don't forget, not only has covid changed things, not only did Man of Steel cost more to make, but The Batman wasn't in theaters as long because they wanted to put it up on their streaming service and they let everyone know that - that wasn't a factor with Man of Steel. Another consideration, after Nolan's Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises, and Marvel's Avengers, WB just assumed that superhero movies would make a billion dollars, and were disappointed when Superman couldn't crack that. After all the DCEU has disappointed, WB no longer assumes that anything below a billion is an automatic failure. Never mind the fact that when Man of Steel came out DC was in a stronger position after Nolan. Now they're coming off their divisive DCEU stuff, their brand has been tarnished. Calling The Batman's $700+ million not good is to ignore how different things have become. The MCU can crank out billion dollar movies, but largely WB/DC just hasn't, and they've stopped assuming that they will. The Batman was a success. Maybe not a runaway success, but a good success nonetheless, and that's evident in how a sequel has been greenlit and they're still going through with the spin off streaming series. If it had been a disappointment WB would be panicking as they always do.

We've had this discussion elsewhere, but nope. The marketing for Marvel movies mostly has the same "tone" but it always revolves around "something you've never seen before is gonna happen". As do most trailers.

And yet most of the time we have seen it before. Endgame and the multiverse not withstanding.

Whereas the trailers for The Batman and even the synopsis made it seem like the same old Batman story (which thankfully it wasn't).

Except they weren't. Dark, grounded, and gritty? Sure. I get that. But no, the trailers didn't sell this as a Dark Knight retread, but as Seven by way of Gotham. It was obvious that this would be different from previous movies despite still being in the grounded gritty mold. I think that some people were just so "been there seen that" on the dark and gritty thing they just couldn't see through to the unique things that this film was promising.

DC has to learn better marketing with the Batman franchise. The goal isn't to make every film fill like the same thing. It's to show what's different about this one.

And I think that they did. I just don't think that people realised it because it wasn't a pivot to more colorful and fantastic elements. But that doesn't mean it was marketed the same as Nolan's films.

764 million with rave reviews and absolutely no competition for a whole month (during spring break) is underwhelming, specially when Doctor Strange is gonna blow right past it with much more divisive reviews just one month later

No. Doctor Strange is part of the MCU, it came off of the wildly successful Spider-Man No Way Home. The Batman is from the very damaged DC brand, is the first film in a reboot (those traditionally start off weak), is coming off DC's divisive universe even if it's not a part of it, is 3 hours long, is a slow burn, and was hugely telegraphed as coming out on HBO Max for cheap a month after - and let's not pretend like that isn't a factor. Disney isn't hollering that Doctor Strange will be available on Disney+ four weeks after the movie's premier. Let's not compare the two as if there's no difference. There are a lot of differences that factored in here, and when you factor those in, from it not being the MCU, DC's brand problem, fewer showings just because it's a longer film, being yet another reboot, and the huge push to streaming which you better believe had an effect, it did well. It was a success all things considered. And it's in a strong position for an even more successful sequel.

[Alpha]

Most movies make 95% of their total Box Office in the first month.

Anyway, I'm not arguing whether all Marvel movies are the same, I'm saying that they explicitely state what new story elements the movie has, as do all trailers. Not the case with The Batman. Even going by the synopsis which was the same one as The Dark knight.

And I didn't say anything about the trailers being "dark and gritty", I'm talking about the story that it promoted.

You keep bringing up excuses but don't apply them to a movie like Joker, which also had all the same problems as The Batman and didn't have the advantage of having no competition for an entire month.

I don't know why you keep talking about the HBO Max thing as if everyone has it and everyone knew when it was gonna be released there.

[Vakanai]

Most movies make 95% of their total Box Office in the first month.

I don't think you are getting what I'm laying out (for some reason my mind flashbacked to old 70s movies). I'm not saying it made substantially less because it only had a month in theaters, I'm saying that it made less because literally everyone knew that they could watch it on HBO Max within a month. It went to streaming too soon, and everyone knew it. People who might have caught it in theaters could have decided to catch it on streaming because they didn't have as long to wait.

Anyway, I'm not arguing whether all Marvel movies are the same, I'm saying that they explicitely state what new story elements the movie has, as do all trailers. Not the case with The Batman. Even going by the synopsis which was the same one as The Dark knight.

Disagree. Ignoring the synopsis, the trailers played up a more neo-noir Finch-film-styled serial killer, a more stripped down grounded Batmobile, and a more violent action-y Batman (by just showing Batman clearly pummeling a guy - Nolan can't film fight scenes for shit). If one watched the trailers, it was clear some of the ways that this was different from Nolan's films. But I think people here wanted such an obviously different tone and style that they couldn't see all that.

And I didn't say anything about the trailers being "dark and gritty", I'm talking about the story that it promoted.

I think that they did a good enough job on that too. Riddler had a more Seven/Saw vibe than Ledger's Joker, Batman was clearly more raw, it had a more noir vibe, a bit more horror tinged. It was pretty clear I thought.

You keep bringing up excuses but don't apply them to a movie like Joker, which also had all the same problems as The Batman and didn't have the advantage of having no competition for an entire month

.

Because I don't need to? Joker was before the pandemic, was before HBO Max launched, was marketed as an Oscar bait movie, had a hell of a lot of free PR because of manufactured controversy, had people curious about it because said controversy, and probably a dozen different reasons why it captured the zeitgeist at that time. It did not in any way have the "same" problems as The Batman and had some advantages it didn't. They're so different I'm not sure why you think it works as an argument for The Batman somehow doing poorly in your opinion.

It really just feels like people are obsessed with the billion number and a Batman movie not reaching it is somehow a disappointing failure.

I don't know why you keep talking about the HBO Max thing as if everyone has it and everyone knew when it was gonna be released there.

I don't know if everyone has it, but I know that plenty enough people do, and I would be surprised if anyone didn't know it was going to be released there so soon considering how much talk there was about it. There was a lot...like a lot a lot.

[Alpha]

Disagree. Ignoring the synopsis, the trailers played up a more neo-noir Finch-film-styled serial killer, a more stripped down grounded Batmobile, and a more violent action-y Batman (by just showing Batman clearly pummeling a guy - Nolan can't film fight scenes for shit). If one watched the trailers, it was clear some of the ways that this was different from Nolan's films. But I think people here wanted such an obviously different tone and style that they couldn't see all that.

I think that they did a good enough job on that too. Riddler had a more Seven/Saw vibe than Ledger's Joker, Batman was clearly more raw, it had a more noir vibe, a bit more horror tinged. It was pretty clear I thought.

That's called tone or style or whatever. It's a more or less subtle thing and none of that has to do with story, premise, idea.

Because I don't need to? Joker was before the pandemic, was before HBO Max launched, was marketed as an Oscar bait movie, had a hell of a lot of free PR because of manufactured controversy, had people curious about it because said controversy, and probably a dozen different reasons why it captured the zeitgeist at that time. It did not in any way have the "same" problems as The Batman and had some advantages it didn't. They're so different I'm not sure why you think it works as an argument for The Batman somehow doing poorly in your opinion.

It really just feels like people are obsessed with the billion number and a Batman movie not reaching it is somehow a disappointing failure.

I didn't say anything about Billion dollars. The movie didn't even make 850 million

Joker is a mature movie with a long runtime, has a brand new actor in it's own rebooted universe, it was coming off a damaged DC Brand (6/7 of the reasons you used to defend The Batman)

I don't know if everyone has it, but I know that plenty enough people do, and I would be surprised if anyone didn't know it was going to be released there so soon considering how much talk there was about it. There was a lot...like a lot a lot.

So what's your estimation of lost revenue? How much more do you think it would've done if it wasn't on HBO max in April? You are making a big deal out of this so I wanna know how much of an impact you think it had. I live in Europe and I'll let you know that HBO MAX doesn't have many subscribers over here. So the underwhelming worldwide Box Office has nothing to with it.

[Ascended]

But we're just going to keep getting DCEU 2: The Quest for Marvel Money. I'm just not confident that they will get that right. And even if they do, I'm not sure general audiences are even willing to put in the effort to follow another universe. MCU might have taken up all the room that niche has, and there might not be room for a similar universe. Certainly no other attempts have worked out.

This has been rattling around the back of my mind too. I don't think we have any precedent to look to either, this is all new territory. Maybe audiences will roll with it, maybe they won't....we won't know until we have another viable shared universe, I think.

The (current) Godzilla/Kong films are, I think, successful....but there's so few of them I don't think it qualifies as legitimate competition for the MCU. Not when it comes to being shared universes anyway. I suppose there might be an argument that the DCEU's poor reception is partially due to people not wanting to follow a second sprawling superhero narrative, but I don't think that's the case, I think the DCEU failed simply because the films (usually) aren't any good. I guess we could compare the Arrowverse, but that's a different medium that isn't in direct competition with Marvel in theaters, so it's not really apt either.

I think there's room for (at least) two shared universes in cinema, but that's pure guesswork on my part and likely influenced by my comic fandom.

[DochaDocha]

For what it's worth, HBO and HBO Max combined have over 70 million worldwide subscribers. If 25% of HBO users were Batman fans, and 25% of them waited for The Batman to appear on streaming, that's a loss of 4.4 million tickets sold. I have no idea if those assumptions are any good, but some food for thought.

[Vakanai]

That's called tone or style or whatever. It's a more or less subtle thing and none of that has to do with story, premise, idea.

To each their own - it seemed plenty different to me.

I didn't say anything about Billion dollars. The movie didn't even make 850 million

So? It made enough to be a success. For the cost put into it, they made plenty of profit and it got nearly universal good reviews. Maybe it's not as big a success as you personally think that it should have been - how does that make it not a success if it was both profitable and had positive critical reception? Many DCEU movies have only managed one or the other, some none, and this has both.

Never mind we can't call it's success "underwhelming" if we don't know what they expected for it. It's one of their best performing movies in years. Only Aquaman and Joker have done better since JL bombed at the box office. What does it matter if it made $150 million less than you think it should? If this was considered underwhelming then WB should have packed up and gone out of business years ago.

Joker is a mature movie with a long runtime, has a brand new actor in it's own rebooted universe, it was coming off a damaged DC Brand (6/7 of the reasons you used to defend The Batman)

Not quite. I never listed "mature movie" as a negative. It's runtime isn't long, it's 2 hours and 2 minutes. Once upon a time that was a long runtime, but it's been normalized for years now, all the MCU films are 2 hours. The general population doesn't consider it a rebooted universe in the same way as The Batman is - Joker's never had a solo film before. So fewer of the marks against The Batman applies here, and again a whole slew of new and different advantages in its favor. They're just too different to compare.

So what's your estimation of lost revenue? How much more do you think it would've done if it wasn't on HBO max in April? You are making a big deal out of this so I wanna know how much of an impact you think it had. I live in Europe and I'll let you know that HBO MAX doesn't have many subscribers over here. So the underwhelming worldwide Box Office has nothing to with it.

I couldn't even hazard an educated guess, so playing it safe with a wild guess, probably somewhere between $50-100 million. Which oddly puts it only around $50 million less than what you said would be a success. I could be wrong, it is a "wild" guess. Does it matter? $850 million being a success and over $700 million being a failure seems rather arbitrary and wild too imo.

[Ascended]

I think we need to take box office from 2020 onwards with a grain of salt. Lots of stuff in the mix to mess with the numbers and skew results. Not just the pandemic (which is still a major concern for lots of people), but streaming, growing economic uncertainty, etc.

With The Batman, everyone knew it'd hit HBOMax quickly, and while I have no idea how much that factored into the box office, I suspect it played a factor in things just like Black Widow's same-day-streaming reduced that film's box office. I know that was part of why I skipped it.

The MCU doing billion dollar releases right now says far less about the movie industry in general, and far more about the popularity of the MCU itself. It seems like box office is low for everybody who isn't an Avenger, but that doesn't mean people hate those other films, it just means everyone really loves the Avengers.

[Vakanai]

I think we need to take box office from 2020 onwards with a grain of salt. Lots of stuff in the mix to mess with the numbers and skew results. Not just the pandemic (which is still a major concern for lots of people), but streaming, growing economic uncertainty, etc.

With The Batman, everyone knew it'd hit HBOMax quickly, and while I have no idea how much that factored into the box office, I suspect it played a factor in things just like Black Widow's same-day-streaming reduced that film's box office. I know that was part of why I skipped it.

The MCU doing billion dollar releases right now says far less about the movie industry in general, and far more about the popularity of the MCU itself. It seems like box office is low for everybody who isn't an Avenger, but that doesn't mean people hate those other films, it just means everyone really loves the Avengers.

This. We need to stop holding DC films, yes even Batman films, to Marvel's success. The MCU isn't the normal standard, it's the stellar overachiever. Saying everything that doesn't do Marvel numbers is underwhelming has to stop.

Hell, the MCU has had movies that have made around the same bank as The Batman but we don't discuss those like they're failures.

[NaVi]

The truth is that if the Batman box office is made by Superman at Warner/DC they would be talking about a failure, in the sequel they would include another hero who would become the main protagonist while Superman becomes a simple extra, nobody can deny it (BvS). I know that some Batman fan will say that it is not the same and they are right, from Warner/DC they have said (not directly) that Superman is a character that is useless, that he is worthless, but Batman is god, that god has a box office comparable to that of a character who is worthless, he is a failure, he is making a fool of himself, but since he is Batman, there is already talk of a sequel.

[DochaDocha]

I think there are a lot of reasons why No Way Home made $800 M domestic and $2 billion worldwide, whereas The Batman is going to come up way short of that, but I'm guessing WB has got to be at least a little green with envy. I'm guessing a big part of it is that people haven't warmed up to Battinson yet, since he's essentially pulling early Tom Holland numbers. But pair Holland with a lot of actors people have fondness for, and everything doubles.

But I also have a theory, er, gut feeling that Batman's disproportionately popular in the US compared to the rest of the world, which someone from China told me about 15 years ago. Batman gets American audiences excited, but only kind of excited internationally. For comparison, if Spider-man pulls $350 million domestically, that translates to $1 billion worldwide. But if Batman pulls in $350 million domestically, that translates to maybe $750 million worldwide.

[The Kid]

Alpha is not wrong. The trailers did make it seem like it was a similar movie to the last few Batman movies. Crime, corruption, fear as a tool, etc.. Marvel tone may feel the same but the basis of their marketing is always something new every time. The one time I think they messed up with that was Age of Ultron where it just seemed like more Avengers from the first movie and it underperformed to Disney's expectations.

The Batman obviously did well but I think there has been some fatigue a la The Amazing Spider-Man movies which also didn't feel fresh to the general audience. Look at MCU Spidey. The first one is built on marketing a Spider-Man in the MCU now. The second as an epilogue to Endgame and obviously NWH as a crossover of all Spider-Man movies. That's how the MCU has marketed the Spider-Man movies and kept them from feeling stale despite us having gotten a new Spidey film almost every 3 years for two decades straight. There's no reason a Batman film with great reviews and no competition didn't break 800 million unless there was some flaws in the marketing.

[DochaDocha]

Alpha is not wrong. The trailers did make it seem like it was a similar movie to the last few Batman movies. Crime, corruption, fear as a tool, etc.

I guess they didn't feel overly similar to me. They're both Batman, and Joel Schumacher hasn't made a Batman movie in 25 years, so you figure there's going to be a lot of similarity. I think once I saw Battinson's Batmobile my impression instantly shifted to different.

[Vordan]

WB is likely hoping that The Batman is a Batman Begins scenario where the first movie does ok and then the sequel blows everyone away and brings in the money. They’re satisfied with its performance given they’ve greenlit a sequel and multiple spin-offs, but I have no doubt in my mind that they expect the next main entry to make a billion. If it doesn’t they will be disappointed, it’s not worth keeping Batman separated from the rest of the DCEU if he’s not breaking the billion dollar marker in their eyes, and Reeves will likely lose a lot of freedom.

I think there are a lot of reasons why No Way Home made $800 M domestic and $2 billion worldwide, whereas The Batman is going to come up way short of that, but I'm guessing WB has got to be at least a little green with envy. I'm guessing a big part of it is that people haven't warmed up to Battinson yet, since he's essentially pulling early Tom Holland numbers. But pair Holland with a lot of actors people have fondness for, and everything doubles.

But I also have a theory, er, gut feeling that Batman's disproportionately popular in the US compared to the rest of the world, which someone from China told me about 15 years ago. Batman gets American audiences excited, but only kind of excited internationally. For comparison, if Spider-man pulls $350 million domestically, that translates to $1 billion worldwide. But if Batman pulls in $350 million domestically, that translates to maybe $750 million worldwide.

Batman is America’s favorite hero but Spider-Man is the most popular hero in the world. Spidey is more popular internationally than anyone else I believe. China prefers mindless CGI blockbusters over anything else, it’s why they loved Aquaman.

[DochaDocha]

Batman is America’s favorite hero but Spider-Man is the most popular hero in the world. Spidey is more popular internationally than anyone else I believe. China prefers mindless CGI blockbusters over anything else, it’s why they loved Aquaman.

I gotta agree, I don't know why Aquaman made a billion dollars, either. Though I'd point out mindless CGI is probably preferred in all non-English-speaking countries. The Transformers and Fast movies are always more popular outside the US than within.

Spider-man might've been a bad example, but Batman's ratio of international to domestic box office is probably still on the low end for superheroes and action films. In a strange way, that might make Batman more American than Superman, ironically.