Justice League: Study Claims More Than 60% of Audiences Didn’t Finish Snyder Cut in First Week

Zack Snyder’s Justice League debuted on HBO Max last month and while it may have been the most anticipated release of the year thus far and drew in a staggering number of viewers during its first week, the film’s four-hour run time might have been a bit much for more than half of those viewers. According to one study, only 36 percent of the 1.8 million U.S. households that tuned into the Snyder Cut during its first week actually made it through to the end — meaning that over 60 percent of viewers didn’t finish the film.

The numbers come from third-party aggregator Samba TV — HBO Max doesn’t generally release its actual viewership numbers. According to Samba, 1.8 million households watched the Snyder Cut for at least five minutes, but the actual number of households that stuck it out for the whole 242 minutes is only 800,000. While the numbers should be taken for what they are as third-party data, it’s a pretty stunning analysis though what it means is open to interpretation. It could be that a large number of viewers tuned in just to see what all the hype was about and never had any intention of sitting down to watch the whole film. It could be that some viewers watched to a certain point and then had to come back at a later time. There are a number of variables here. However, even with people not sitting all the way through to the end, Forbes calculated that the Snyder Cut was a solid investment (via SlashFilm). With there being 1.48 million new downloads of HBO Max, and assuming those are all paying subscribers at $14.99 that will continue the service, that adds up to around $22.2 million monthly — a solid number against the $70 million invested to complete the film.

All of that said, fans probably shouldn’t expect WarnerMedia to want to “#RestoreTheSnyderVerse”. WarnerMedia CEO Ann Sarnoff recently told Variety that they’re happy with their current plans, plans that do not include Zack Snyder’s version of the DC Universe.

“I appreciate that they love Zack’s work and we are very thankful for his many contributions to DC,” Sarnoff explained. “We’re just so happy that he could bring his cut of the Justice League to life because that wasn’t in the plan until about a year ago. With that comes the completion of his trilogy. We’re very happy we’ve done this, but we’re very excited about the plans we have for all the multi-dimensional DC characters that are being developed right now.

“We wanted to give Zack the opportunity to complete his vision in a four-hour movie, which is impossible to do in theaters,” she added. “We’re happy that we have HBO Max to let the rope out as it were and allow the fans to see all four hours of Zack’s vision.”

Zack Snyder’s Justice League is now streaming on HBO Max.