With Hits Like 'Color Purple' and 'Wonka,' Warner Bros. Doesn't Need DC Superheroes

Warner Bros. Discovery had a spectacular 2023 if you don't count DC Films

Coming in hot at the last minute, both at the box office and in the Oscar race, The Color Purple debuted on Monday with $18.15 million. That’s the second-biggest Christmas Day debut ever behind WB’s Sherlock Holmes ($24 million in 2009) and gives Warner Bros. Discovery the top three spots at the domestic box office. I think that's a record for a single studio, and since I’m still recovering from a bout with the flu, you’ll have to take my word.

The Dream Factory offered up $29 million in theatrical earnings on Monday, with two of the pictures (The Color Purple and Wonka) already or likely to be solid hits. The odd man out? The DC superhero sequel, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, earned $133 million worldwide over its debut frame and will struggle to commercially justify its $205 million price tag. With hits like Barbie, Evil Dead Rise, Wonka and The Color Purple, who needs the DCEU? 

Blitz Bazawule’s well-reviewed (89% and 7.4/10 on Rotten Tomatoes) and well-received (an A from CinemaScore) re-adaptation of Alice Walker’s classic novel (starring Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, Colman Domingo and Halle Bailey among many others) is a riff on the recent stage adaptation. This whole “movie of the musical based on the movie” thing is all the rage, as we’ll again discover when Mean Girls (currently tracking for a $25 million debut weekend) opens on January 12. Both Sherlock Holmes and Fences ($6.6 million on Christmas Day in 2016) earned around 8.5x their respective opening day gross. Dreamgirls went wide on Christmas Day (also a Monday in 2006) and earned 12x its $8.7 million opening day.

If a $158-$213 million domestic cume seems hyperbolic, recall that Alien vs. Predator: Requiem earned just 4.4x its $9.5 million Christmas Day debut in 2007 for a $42 million finish. So, if The Color Purple inexplicably plays like one of the most frontloaded December releases ever, it still makes it to $79 million domestic. Just imagine for a moment how Warner Bros. Discovery’s 2023 theatrical slate would look if they weren’t also offering four failed DC superhero flicks.

They had their biggest grosser ever with Barbie ($1.4 billion), two huge horror hits with the intended-for-HBO Max Evil Dead Rise ($146 million) and The Nun II ($268 million), a relative overperformer in The Meg 2: The Trench ($390 million on a $130 million budget) and a patented “Mendelson eats crow” sleeper in Wonka (admittedly I predicted doom back in late 2016). Oh, and they handled overseas distribution on MGM titles like Creed III, Air and Saltburn. Even throwing in the intended-for-HBO Max Magic Mike’s Last Dance ($58 million on a priced-for-streaming $40 million), WB had a solid year.

Except Shazam: Fury of the Gods, The Flash, Blue Beetle and Aquaman 2 (presuming an optimistic $350 million worldwide for Aquaman 2) earned $885 million (less than one Hobbit prequel) on a combined $650 million budget.

The notion of DC doing the Warner Bros. brand more harm than good is not new. The handwringing over the micromanaging of Suicide Squad, the Justice League director swap, sending Wonder Woman 1984 to HBO Max, Dwayne Johnson attempting a coup to place Black Adam at the center of the cinematic universe and shelving Batgirl, provided years of consistently terrible publicity that consistently overshadowed their successes elsewhere.

Just in 2017, the relative failure of Justice League ($659 million on a $300 million budget) overshadowed the blow-out triumphs of Annabelle: Creation, It, Dunkirk, The LEGO Batman Movie, Wonder Woman and Kong: Skull Island (and the crushing whiff that was King Arthur and the Legend of the Sword). Meanwhile, from 2013 to 2023, Warner Bros. was offering “What we say we want in theaters” hits like Gravity, American Sniper, A Star Is Born, Crazy Rich Asians, Dune, Elvis, Don’t Worry Darling and The Color Purple.

The solution is simple. Treat DC Studios as just one tentpole franchise among others, not a do-or-die blockbuster machine on which the fate of the entire studio rests. Let Elseworlds like The Batman Part II open whenever they want, but otherwise, cap DC Studios releases at one per year, maybe two if there’s a cheaper Shazam-sized title on deck.  

Most importantly, if James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy (presumed quality notwithstanding) performs like every other Superman movie following Superman II in 1981, don’t be afraid to move on. Universal didn’t give in to sunk cost fallacy and closed the book on the Dark Universe after one mediocre Mummy movie. Because when you can turn Barbie into a $1.4 billion-earning mega-smash, and when you can push The Color Purple to an $18 million opening day, you don’t really need a deluge of DC superheroes trying (and often failing) to save the day.

While Marvel clearly “won” the decade-long war against DC in terms of box office fortune and glory, Marvel movies are among Disney’s only films that still (only semi-regularly) net A-level box office. Warner Bros. is in the exact opposite position, precisely because they can turn Wonka and Color Purple into late-year hits. I’d argue that WB won the cape movie wars precisely because they don’t need the cape movies to survive.  

Because -- say it with me now -- in the end the world didn’t need a Superman, just a Barbie.