Next Year’s Biggest Movie May Be One That Doesn’t Play In Theaters

Zack Snyder’s four-hour, mega-budget Justice League debuting as a streaming original feels like the natural endgame of a generational shift toward streaming and VOD over movie theaters.

Zack Snyder dropped what amounts to the first teaser for the “Snyder Cut” of Justice League on Thursday. It’s an announcement teaser in its purest form, with a single moment of Gal Gadot discovering a painting of Darkseid, all set to Jesse Eisenberg’s delicious sequel-bait monologue from the epilogue of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The clip is essentially a teaser for a trailer, which is all-but-certain to drop during the virtual DC FanDome event occurring on August 22. I’m presuming we’ll get a release date for the film (or mini-series), and I’m curious as to whether WB will A) release it during the summer and B) position it as the summer’s big event movie even if it doesn’t play in theaters.

In terms of size, scale and (all-told) budget, Justice League: The Snyder Cut could be next summer’s biggest movie by default. We can haggle over whether the alleged $30 million-plus budget for constructing a finalized version of the discarded “Snyder Cut” should be merged with the $300 million budget for the Joss Whedon-directed theatrical cut. That huge budget was partially due Whedon replacing Snyder, a process which involved massive rewrites and reshoots which created a final version that played like essentially “Diet Avengers.” Like Solo: A Star Wars Story, a director swap and copious reshoots created a budget that demanded top-tier grosses. Like Solo, a mediocre result ($394 million for Solo and $659 million for Justice League) was outright disastrous due to the increased costs.

The Ron Howard-directed Han Solo prequel ended up costing closer to $275 million than $175 million, meaning its $213 million domestic and $394 million global gross was a bomb as opposed to a “disappointment in relation to cost.” Apples and oranges perhaps, but a franchise-hungry Universal gave us a sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman after the 2012 Kristen Stewart/Chris Hemsworth fantasy earned $396 million global on a $170 million budget. The $270 million budget for Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns was partially due to discarded Superman movies that never made it past the development stage. Ditto, allegedly, Paul Feig’s $144 million Ghostbusters. In both cases, merely “okay” totals ($394 million in 2006 and $229 million in 2016) were outright disasters due to the inflated budgets.

If we count the money that went into bringing Justice League to theaters and the money that will be spent bringing the “Snyder Cut” to HBO Max, then the new version essentially cost around $350 million, making it one of the more expensive movies of all time. Looking at the films slated for next summer, assuming everything currently scheduled actually opens next year, the films that likely cost $150-$250 million (with lots of wiggle room) are Jurassic World: Dominion, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, F9, The Batman, The Suicide Squad, Godzilla Vs. Kong, Fantastic Beasts 3, Mission: Impossible 7 and (of course) Avatar 2. Even the alleged “$1 billion for four sequels” Avatar price-tag puts Avatar 2 at $250 million in production costs.

You might can argue that applying the full budget of the 2017 Justice League to the Snyder Cut is iffy at best. We’re still looking at a four-hour movie, and yes, I hope they release it as a single feature and not a mini-series, which will presumably have the pomp, circumstance and apocalyptic sturm und drang found in Batman v Superman and 300. Whether or not it’s any good (and, again, I enjoyed the Joss Whedon version as a character-driven Saturday morning cartoon), I expect a vast increase in scale and scope compared to the narratively claustrophobic theatrical cut. It will be interesting to see if the film, which will debut on HBO Max, will be, by default, next summer’s “biggest” movie.

As I wrote late 2015 prior to the release of the third Batman v Superman trailer (the one that essentially gave away the whole movie), we were already at a tipping point in terms of network, cable and streaming TV being able to offer filmed content that could approximate, in terms of movie stars, production values and screenwriting, maybe 90% of what might be offered in theaters. Offhand, the only “you can only get this in theaters” product, even then, was mega-budget fantasy action movies like Furious 7 and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. As such, it was of some importance that the Henry Cavill/Ben Affleck/Amy Adams/Jessie Eisenberg sequel at least try to be a mammoth superhero epic. Nitpicks and problems notwithstanding, it most certainly was.

It was in late 2015/early 2016 when we first started seeing an exodus of general moviegoers as large portions of “seeing a movie just to see a movie” folks opted for streaming content over non-event movies. Studios like Sony and Paramount, which depended on star vehicles and studio programmers, found themselves brutally outmatched by Disney’s IP machine. I’ve often argued that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing folks that Disney and Netflix were competitors. They are now with Disney+ pulling its weight in the streaming war, but for years Netflix convinced audiences that anything other than a mega-movie wasn’t worth a trip to the theater, while Disney argued that its IP-specific theatricals were the unquestionable mega-movies. Intentional or not, it was beneficial to both sides.

I can only guestimate as to how the coronavirus pandemic will affect theatrical moviegoing when theaters do re-open next month. But I’m pretty comfortable arguing that the “darkest timeline” scenario, one where theaters become the equivalent of video game arcades and only offer the biggest of big “you can’t approximate this at home” movies, because audiences choose to watch everything else via streaming or VOD, is even closer to becoming a reality. Prior to the pandemic, box office was up, ticket sales were slightly down but much larger percentage of domestic box office went toward a smaller and smaller number of very big movies. In 2011, 16.9% of the year’s total box office went to the six biggest grossers. In 2018, the top six earned 25.5%.

Going forward, the idea of going to a theater to see anything that isn’t a must-see theatrical event is going to be even less likely, both due to the health risks and to audiences even more acclimated to watching films at home. It’s one thing to risk danger and disease to see Tenet, but is the otherwise commercially viable Bill and Ted Face the Music really going to be A) worth the risk and B) worth wearing a mask and swearing off food and drink for two hours? Maybe once there’s a vaccine or viable treatment options things will return to some sense of normality, but by that time a lot of folks will be even more used to watching all manner of movies at home.

News that Aaron Sorkin’s all-star The Trial of the Chicago 7 potentially going to Netflix makes sense. That flick is exactly the kind of movie which once was a solid “Saturday night at the movies” for grown-ups but now struggles to get audiences into theaters as adults see the same four-quadrant franchise flicks as their kids. And in the last five years, the size and scale of TV shows and mini-series have only grown. The Mandalorian provides theater-worthy Star Wars adventures on streaming, while the upcoming MCU shows will allegedly be somewhat to scale with the movies. Shadowhunters is unquestionably superior to The Mortal Engines: City of Bones, while today’s genre fans would prefer their favorite fantasy property be given a streaming or cable TV show over a movie.

Aquaman is still a much bigger action spectacular compared to Legends of Tomorrow, and The Rise of Skywalker is a much bigger production than The Mandalorian or even The Clone Wars. But, depending on what it is and how it’s received, the notion of a four-hour, mega-budget Justice League movie premiering not in theaters but on a streaming service feels like a potential end game. Even considering the production’s very complicated history and the fact that this new cut is playing to a specific demographic, it still blows my mind that what could be the definitive Justice League movie will be released as a glorified TV movie (or mini-series). Okay, so Lonesome Dove is still one of the greatest westerns ever made, but this isn’t quite that.

If the film is similar in scale to the Joss Whedon version and/or is aggressively terrible, well, Netflix releasing blights like Bright and Disney+ debuting the foul likes of Artemis Fowl constitutes a favor to movie theaters. However, if Justice League: The Snyder Cut is remotely well-received, massively-scaled and/or generates large numbers of viewers, well, I’m not entirely sure what that means for movie theaters but it’s nothing good. That feels like the climax of the last five years which has seen a generational shift from movie theaters to streaming and VOD. Justice League, once positioned in our imagination and then as an upcoming release as the ultimate IMAX-friendly superhero blockbuster, is just another straight-to-streaming debut. I just hope I get to see it in an IMAX theater.