DC die-hards insist it’s time to bust the myth that the DCEU was a flop franchise

There was no good reason the DCEU couldn’t have been as successful as the MCU. DC Comics has a vast collection of heroes to base movies around, several bona fide pop culture icons, and a rich history of critically acclaimed cinematic adaptations.

So you could be forgiven for wondering what the heck happened over the last few years. While the MCU is busy making plans up to the 2030s the DCEU has been killed off before its time, with James Gunn’s rebooted MCU rising from the ashes to a (hopefully) bright future.

But fans over on r/DC_Cinematic are insistent the DCEU isn’t the flop some might assume:

It’s a decent achievement, though responses were quick to point out that considering the budgets involved the returns should have been much higher. A sobering bit of information for WB execs is that the last seven DCEU movies add up to just a quarter of that $6.6 billion, and none of those have broken the $500 million mark.

Awkwardly for Warner Bros., this means the most successful DCEU movies were released during the Zack Snyder era, with the movies he directed and produced making the lion’s share of the DCEU’s revenue. But, displaying the fine long-term thinking the studio is known for, they canned him and the whole franchise promptly went spectacularly off the rails.

Here’s hoping that James Gunn slamming his fist on the big red reset button and trying again pays off, though if a few of his movies underperform we suspect he’s going to find the Sword of Damocles dangling precariously over his head.