Warner Bros. got a taste of audience demand for the DCEU when Wonder Woman 1984 was released simultaneously into theaters and onto HBO Max on Christmas Day. The hotly anticipated sequel may have struggled at the box office after topping out at $165 million globally, but it proved to be a massive success on streaming.
Gal Gadot’s return as Diana Prince scored the biggest digital debut of 2020, even though the critical reaction was lukewarm at best, with fans also blasting the movie for its excessive running time and myriad of plot of holes. By the standards of the COVID-19 era, though, it was an unqualified success, but it’s being blown out of the water in almost every area by Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
Not only has it received a much more enthusiastic reception from both critics and audiences, but data analysts TV Time have crunched the numbers to determine that it’s tracking 35% higher in terms of viewership than Wonder Woman 1984 after its first three days of being available to stream. Based on previous data that estimated Patty Jenkins’ blockbuster was streamed for 2.3 billion minutes in its first week, Snyder’s four-hour epic could realistically be in with a shot of being the single most-watched streaming exclusive ever.
Wonder Woman 1984‘s early figures positioned it ahead of Pixar’s Soul, Netflix’s Bridgerton and Disney Plus’ The Mandalorian, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine Justice League comfortably surpassing that trio of monster success stories. And once the dust has settled and the numbers have been crunched, Warner Bros. and HBO Max could end up announcing the record-breaking figures of the Snyder Cut as the biggest hit to ever land on any streaming service, which is no mean feat.
