By highlighting both ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ and the Snyder Cut of ‘Justice League,’ DC Films is playing to all sides and every fandom.
We got the first Wonder Woman trailer just over four years ago, at a SDCC that also included the first teaser for Zack Snyder’s Justice League before it became (essentially) Joss Whedon’s Justice League. Both films were sold as being course corrections, or steps in the right direction following the divisive (and frontloaded) reception of Batman v Superman. The DC Films epic earned scathing reviews and grossed $873 million worldwide (excellent) from a $424 million global debut (bogus). That this morning’s DC Fandome will include, as the two biggest highlights, the theatrical trailer for Wonder Woman 1984 (delayed from June 5 to October 2) and the first teaser for the HBO Max debut of the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League is inherently symbolic of what DC is up to at the moment. In a sense, they are playing all sides. DC Comics and Warner Bros. have the characters that audiences like. Suicide Squad (a movie centered on comparatively B-level baddies like Deadshot and Captain Boomerang) earned $325 million domestic and $745 million worldwide despite miserable reviews and a lack of play in China. We know that casting big stars as marquee DC characters can make the sale, as we saw with Ben Affleck being cast as Batman (exactly seven years ago today), Will Smith playing Deadshot and Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. Right now, seven years after Affleck was cast as Batman in order to goose interest in the second Henry Cavill-as-Superman movie and four years after the franchise seemed to be on (artistic) life support, DC Films is in as healthy a place as they’ve ever been. Aquaman and Joker both topped $1 billion worldwide while Shazam! earned strong reviews and $366 million on a $90 million budget (a smaller-than-hoped total that got kneecapped by Avengers: Endgame in weekend four). Birds of Prey stumbled ($203 million on an $82 million budget), but WB got credit for letting Cathy Yan make a pretty great (and acclaimed) R-rated, all-girls crime caper that’s going to be a relative cult favorite.
