The release of Zack Snyder's Justice League led to a 64 percent increase in downloads of the HBO Max app. The Snyder Cut is easily the highest-profile release on the HBO Max app to date, finally allowing viewers the chance to see Zack Snyder's original version of Justice League. Naturally, there's intense interest in just how the mammoth four-hour-long movie performed.
This is not just a matter of academic interest, though. The Snyder Cut was released in response to a years-long campaign, and fans of controversial director Zack Snyder have now moved on. Their goal is to "restore the SnyderVerse," by encouraging the release of the David Ayer cut of 2016's Suicide Squad and hopefully getting Snyder's Justice League sequels made as well. It's one thing for a campaign to trend on Twitter, though, but the reality is that this will only happen if the Snyder Cut is a success for HBO Max. Unfortunately, streaming services tend to be quite secretive when it comes to releasing performance metrics such as viewing figures. That means the best indication comes from third-party analytics companies.
Bloomberg has analyzed data from Apptopia, who estimate mobile app performance metrics including downloads, in-app purchases and daily active users. According to Apptopia, in the week ending March 28 there were 119.1 million app sessions on HBO Max, an increase of 8.9 percent. What's more, there were 1.48 million downloads of the HBO Max app, an increase of 64 percent.
This is currently the best real indication of the Snyder Cut's actual performance on HBO Max. Another third-party analytics company, Samba TV, had reported 1.8 million viewers in the Snyder Cut's opening weekend; but their measure only represents people who watched more than the first five minutes, and they later clarified only 1/3 had finished the Snyder Cut over that period. What's more, an update on Twitter suggested views of the film had slowed down over the rest of the opening week. But viewership isn't the key metric for a streaming service anyway; the important ones are subscriptions, retention, and engagement. The increase in sessions reported by Apptopia indicate existing subscribers were particularly active in the week after the Snyder Cut's release (engagement), while the marked increase in downloads is a good indicator of new subscribers. It's reasonable to assume these were also concentrated around the opening weekend.
This does not necessarily point to lasting growth for HBO Max; the challenge is whether those new subscribers can be retained. Fortunately, the Snyder Cut is just the first major release on HBO Max, with Warner Bros. releasing all its 2021 movies in cinemas and on HBO Max simultaneously. This means the streaming service has a wealth of high-profile content on its way, including Godzilla Vs. Kong. All in all, then, it does look as though Zack Snyder's Justice League should be considered a positive beginning to a strong period for HBO Max, although it's still doubtful it will have performed well enough in an of itself to restore the SnyderVerse
Source: Bloomberg
