Samba TV reports that Zack Snyder’s Justice League drew 1.8M HBO Max households in its first five minutes over its premiere weekend of March 19-21.
That figure ranks behind the 2.2M U.S. households who watched Wonder Woman 1984 on the streamer over Dec. 25-27.
Samba TV polls terrestrial smart TVs. Separately, insiders have informed us that the four-hour-plus cut of the Snyder cut was massive, yet slotted behind Wonder Woman 1984.
Samba TV showed that the diversity breakdown for Snyder Cut households were Black (+17%), Hispanic (+20%), and Asian (+18%) demos which over-indexed. Of the 25 largest markets, the most over-indexing were San Francisco (+67%), Sacramento (+33%), and Los Angeles (+32%).
Wonder Woman 1984 saw Seattle (+93%), San Francisco (+79%), and Portland (+50%) over-indexing the most during its first weekend on the service, with households making $100K+ over-performing when compared to the U.S. overall, as well as households with people aged 25-54, Hispanic households (+17%) and Asian households (+14%). By the end of 2020, WW1984 had clocked 3.03M households per Samba TV.
Interestingly enough, Samba TV found Zack Snyder’s Justice League besting the first weekend premiere of Disney+/Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier which they clocked at 1.7M households. Disney+ released a statement yesterday claiming that Falcon and the Winter Soldier posted the most viewed weekend premiere ever on Disney+, and Samba TV’s data supported that.
Justice League grossed $657.9M worldwide off what was an estimated $300M production cost in November 2017, and according to Deadline film finance sources, lost $60M at the time. That price tag on Justice League is now at an estimated $370M given the pic’s reshoots and additional VFX as Warner Bros heeded the social media call of the pic’s fans and cast to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, seeing a worthy reinvestment and making it a jewel to HBO Max.
The new cut expands greatly on the character arc of DC superhero Cyborg, played by Ray Fisher. That actor has been vocal on social media, accusing Justice League‘s replacement director Joss Whedon of gross and abusive behavior during reshoots four years ago, a claim which WarnerMedia investigated and reported that remedial action had been taken.