The ambiguity over the streaming performance of Zack Snyder’s Justice League has recently become much less of a question mark, thanks to some early marketing for Zack Snyder‘s next movie. There has, quite simply, never been a superhero movie that has gone through the ringer and come out intact like Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and its tale is one that seems like the stuff of fiction. The Snyder Cut’s debut in 2021, after a nearly three year push by Snyder’s fanbase with the hashtag #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, while the strong reception to the movie’s release also swiftly sparked a new hashtag, advocating for Snyder’s two planned Justice League sequels to conclude his story (the one of course became, #RestoreTheSnyderVerse). A common pushback on that desire of many fans is the new soft reboot of the DCU in the works under James Gunn and DC Studios taking DC on film in a new direction, while many detractors maintain that Zack Snyder’s Justice League did not perform well enough for WB and DC to consider reviving Snyder’s plans.
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While the available, albeit partial, data on the Snyder Cut’s performance doesn’t paint the same picture, fans have also gotten a new bit of data in the press release for Snyder’s upcoming UFC movie, Brawler. In its brief synopsis of Snyder’s filmography, the UFC’s press release devotes a fair amount of space to Zack Snyder’s Justice League, which it refers to as having “garnered critical acclaim and the wildly successful cultural phenomenon remains as one of the platforms most viewed film debuts.” While not explicitly numerical data, the phrasing and extent to which the UFC’s press release for Brawler hypes up the Snyder Cut as a major success is the first real indicator of the movie’s performance fans have gotten in a long time, not only indicating the success and longevity of Zack Snyder’s Justice League as a singular movie, but further highlighting the exceptional difficulty Warner Bros. and DC have experienced in trying to leave the Snyderverse behind.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League Was Big – But Exactly How Big?
One thing that makes the conversation around Zack Snyder’s Justice League a never-ending online back-and-forth is the incomplete puzzle of the movie’s viewership numbers and sales figures on both digital download and physical media. The viewership data on the Snyder Cut’s release on HBO Max (since relaunched as simply Max) has only been given a partial picture via Samba TV, which only monitors Smart TVs. Samba TV reported that Zack Snyder’s Justice League amassed 1.8 million views in its first four days of release, with its first 39 days bringing that total to 3.9 million views. This indicates the Snyder Cut maintained a generally strong audience on the platform, and while other subsequent HBO Max releases accrued higher views, the platform had also been expanded to other territories where HBO Max had not been made available at the time of the Snyder Cut’s release, provided some added context for the movie’s window of release.
Additional data made publicly available also points to Zack Snyder’s Justice League as a significant subscription driver for HBO Max, with Variety reporting that it helped HBO Max gain some 3 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2021 (adding subscribers being one of the key factors in determining the value of streaming movies and shows like Zack Snyder’s Justice League). Screen Rant also broke down the movie’s popularity in the summer of 2022, including such data figures as the Snyder Cut performing historically well upon its debut on international streamers such as Canada’s Crave and Australia’s Binge, along with the movie performing strongly on home media as well as its digital release.
Analyzing the exact viewership performance and sales figures of Zack Snyder’s Justice League is, it seems, a more complex undertaking given the incomplete data available and the rather infamous politics surrounding the movie itself. Nonetheless, the available data makes clear that the Snyder Cut was a significant hit. The UFC’s enthusiastic mention of the movie in their press release for Brawler, meanwhile, indicates that the success of Zack Snyder’s Justice League is not only keeping the movie and Snyder’s DCEU firmly within the cultural conversation, but also that the picture of the movie’s popularity is gradually filling in gaps in the available data and becoming more and more clear.
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Warner Bros. Tried To Downplay The Snyder Cut
In the lead-up to the Snyder Cut’s debut, Warner Bros. leadership at the time actively distanced themselves from the movie’s release, with the studio completely sitting out marketing Zack Snyder’s Justice League. As a result that job fell to the studio’s then-parent company AT&T, along with HBO Max and Snyder himself. Both before and after the movie’s debut, Warner Bros. was also insistent on the Snyder Cut having no future beyond being a one-off release, referring to it as “a storytelling cul-de-sac” in a New York Times interview with then-DC Films President Walter Hamada. Then-WB CEO Ann Sarnoff also declared the end for Snyder’s DCEU films in an interview with Variety just four days after the movie’s release. This, combined with the lack of full streaming numbers on Max and the studio’s acrimonious relationship with Snyder at the time (Snyder himself saying that WB was “aggressive anti-Snyder” in their attitude towards the film in an interview with Cinemablend), it’s more than arguable that Warner Bros.-then management made quite overt and concerted efforts to undermine the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League before, during, and after its release. Those efforts, however, proved to be in vain.
The overall response to the Snyder Cut was not simply far more positive than its theatrical counterpart, but one which inspired widespread mainstream interest in seeing the rest of Snyder’s intended five-part epic Justice League story concluded. The fan-created hashtag #RestoreTheSnyderVerse swiftly went supernova after the movie’s release, even hitting 1.5 million tweets in a single day on March 25th, 2021. Adding in the available viewership figures for the movie itself, it’s clear that WB’s efforts to downplay the Snyder Cut were anything but effective, a fact that gains further testimony with how much the legacy of Snyder’s DCEU movies and #RestoreTheSnyderVerse calls have survived even the impending soft relaunch of the DCU.
DC Studios Co-CEO James Gunn himself seems more willing to acknowledge the Snyderverse’s staying power than WB’s previous regime, sharing a photo of himself with Zack Snyder to social media in what he openly admitted was an act of fun trolling on his and Snyder’s part (and which had the exact effect of giving a major surge to Snyderverse calls that both Gunn and Snyder were doubtlessly well aware would happen). Whatever angle one wants to look at the release of the Snyder Cut from, its legacy and impact over the last four years are a far cry from the “cul-de-sac” WB tried to label it as.
The Brawler Press Release Shows The Continued Impact Of Zack Snyder’s Justice League
With Snyder jumping into a more grounded story with Brawler, it would certainly not be uncommon or unexpected for trailers or press releases for the movie to include a blurb referencing Snyder’s past work. While this would be how one would most readily expect to see the Snyder Cut get a name drop in Brawler‘s marketing (i.e. “From the director of Zack Snyder’s Justice League“), the UFC’s own press release made a clear effort to go out of its way to single out Zack Snyder’s Justice League as a major career milestone, and not simply for the fact of its existence against all odds. In hyping up Snyder as the director of Brawler, the UFC’s press release marketed Zack Snyder’s Justice League better than Warner Bros. themselves ever did in highlighting it as remaining “one of the platforms most viewed film debuts” and referencing it as a “cultural phenomenon” that earned “critical acclaim.”
Even without a direct correlation between Snyder’s work as a superhero filmmaker and his leap into helming an MMA movie, the UFC recognized the value of Zack Snyder’s Justice League as a marketing tool to hype up Brawler. Whether the UFC’s marketing department has been shown comprehensive streaming numbers for the Snyder Cut or not isn’t immediately clear from the wording of the press release, but how it is categorized nonetheless indicates that the UFC feels confident enough in Zack Snyder’s Justice League to push it as a major success and even lead with it in listing Snyder’s prior filmography.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League has clearly gone through a wild ride from its conception, its epic journey to eventually being released, and the time since its debut. As a movie that was once described as non-existent by many skeptics, the analysis of Zack Snyder’s Justice League has since shifted into more “lightning in a bottle” terms. While that might be true in terms of the circumstances of its release, it is increasingly clear than the impact left by the Snyder Cut is not the work of a one-off hit. In the time since, the movie has been alternately described as a cultural and/or global phenomenon (the latter being how the movie’s impact was described by former WarnerMedia executive Priya Dogra in a marked contrast to the movie’s cul-de-sac classification by the leadership of Warner Bros proper at the time).
Four years after WB’s leadership went out of its way to undermine the movie’s upcoming release, Zack Snyder’s Justice League has become one of the leading marketing soundbites for his next movie, with the associated body selling it as one of HBO Max’s biggest successes to help drive excitement for Snyder’s work on Brawler. Whether that could mean the full picture of the Snyder Cut’s viewership numbers will eventually be made public, or whether that success could eventually lead to Snyder’s Justice League sequels being revived, there’s one big lesson to take from the UFC’s own use of Zack Snyder’s Justice League in Brawler‘s press release – like Snyder’s friendly picture with James Gunn, it’s more proof that the Snyderverse will never die.
Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Zack Snyder’s Justice League are all available to stream on Max.
