We are about two and a half months out from the release of Warner Brothers Justice League and the first box office predictions are starting to trickle in. The prognosticators at BoxOffice.com are stating that they expect the film to earn somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 million when it hits theaters the weekend of November 17.
If this number holds fast, that would place the film as the second highest grossing opening for the franchise, right after Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice’s premier weekend take of $166 million and ahead of Suicide Squad’s $133 million opening bow.
Box Office also forecasts that the film could do approximately $330 million total at the domestic box office. And that’s a worrisome number. A prediction of a total domestic box office take that is just 2.2 times its opening weekend indicates that a rather large drop off in business is expected relatively quickly. By comparison, Batman V Superman’s total domestic box office was 2.8 times its opening weekend gross, and that film had a nearly 70% drop in business between it’s opening weekend and its second weekend of release. And that’s still better than how Suicide Squad’s and Man Of Steel’s final box office takes fared compared to their opening numbers. Wonder Woman has been the film in the studio’s DC Exntended Universe franchise that has shown real legs, taking in nearly four times its opening weekend gross over the sixteen weeks it was in theaters. (All historical box office data from Box Office Mojo.)
Box Office offers no estimates for how much Justice League may take in overseas. There is some fluctuation in the percentage of domestic gross for each DCEU film’s ultimate worldwide box office take – Batman V Superman’s is 37.8%, Wonder Woman’s is 50.2% and Man Of Steel and Suicide Squad each landed at 43.7%. Taking the average of these using Percentage Increase Calculator – 43.8% – gives a potential worldwide take of somewhere in the neighborhood of $750 million.
Of course, this is all speculation and extrapolation from some early data. Remember back this past spring, Wonder Woman’s initial tracking was predicting a much softer opening than the $103 million it eventually took when it opened in theaters that June. There are plenty of factors that are still in play that could affect how things will play out in November.
Warners will probably never release an honest figure about Justice League’s budget. The film has been through a couple of reported rounds of reshoots that have overhauled the movie, maybe reworking up to two-thirds of it. The studio has sunk a ridiculous amount of money into the film and while three-quarters of a billion dollars could be enough to get into the black after advertising costs and distribution fees, it will probably not be that big of a profit. When Batman V Superman was released, the studio was anticipating the film hitting a billion dollars. That movie fell short of that goal by $127 million. Hopefully tWarners’s expectations are more tempered this time.
