10 Things The DCEU Wishes It Could've Done Differently
9. Released Shazam At Christmas Time
Just below Wonder Woman, Shazam is the second-highest rated movie in the DCEU on Rotten Tomatoes, but financially, Billy Batson and his electric alter-ego didn't come close to replicating Diana Prince's huge success.
Worldwide, Shazam made just $364 million by the end of its run. That number wasn't disastrous by any means, but currently, the movie stands as the lowest-grossing DCEU outing by around $300 million, and even with years of inflation (plus increased audience hunger for comic-book movies) to give it a boost, it still failed to top the gross of the 1989 Batman movie. Let that sink in.
However, it might have performed a lot better financially if Warner Bros. had held its release back until Christmas time.
For starters, the movie itself is set at Christmas time, and is heavy on Christmas imagery, as well as Christmas-related themes. It's all about families - even unorthodox ones - sticking together, a perfectly warm, fuzzy message that winter moviegoers would have devoured.
Plus, DC literally just released a movie at Christmas that proved to be a smash hit: Aquaman. With a billion dollars in the bank, it's the DCEU's best financial performer, and benefited from a slow January period that allowed it to rack up repeat viewings. Even with stiff holiday competition in the form of Bumblebee, Spider-Verse and Mary Poppins Returns, Aquaman came out on top, and what's more, it made it look easy.
True, Shazam would have faced even greater competition this December in the form of Star Wars, Jumanji and Frozen, but even if a December 2019 launch for Shazam caused it to make half what Aquaman did, it would still be a bigger financial success than the April 2019 Shazam we did get, and the film's built-in Christmas connections would have only helped it.