Pouring more fuel on the fire, Zack Snyder’s first 2 DCU movies did better at the box office than the last 6 combined

Barely a day goes by without the DCU fandom devolving into civil war, and more often than not the name of Zack Snyder is tossed around to pour gasoline on a fire that’s already raging out of control.

As chance would have it, the autopsy is already being conducted after The Flash flopped hard during its first weekend in theaters, bringing in numbers that were substantially worse than the ones that saw Dwayne Johnson and Black Adam excised from the franchise in almost record time.

While there should absolutely be a massive asterisk next to it on account of the pandemic, it still can’t be overlooked that Snyder’s Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice earned more at the box office than Shazam!, Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman 1984, The Suicide Squad, Black Adam, and Shazam! Fury of the Gods combined, which underlines just how apathetic audiences have become towards the DCU for any number of reasons over the years.

Not only that, but if you choose to credit Snyder as the director of Justice League – a contentious issue in itself – then unless The Flash does the impossible and earns upwards of $700 million by the time it exits multiplexes, then Snyder’s trilogy will have sold more tickets than seven consecutive DC releases to follow Aquaman’s record-setting haul.

For the penny-pinchers, the shared universe’s first two chapters racked up $1,541,683,046, compared to the $1,438,525,380 brought in by every single feature-length project to arrive on the big screen since April of 2019, which is fairly damning in isolation. As mentioned, though, there are extenuating circumstances, but it’s still a horrendous statistic when you consider the massive budgets and marketing costs in play.