Viewing figures may have improved for Zack Snyder's Justice League - but here's when people turned off. The competition is heating up between different streaming services, but in truth, it's difficult to properly figure out how the various rivals are performing. Viewing figures are valuable data, and the companies rarely disclose them so as not to tip their competitors off in strategic terms. Consequently, to factually understand how a TV show or movie has performed for a streaming service, it requires going to a third-party analytics company.
Samba TV has proved itself particularly valuable when it comes to analyzing the performance of Zack Snyder's Justice League. The analytics service revealed 1.8 million households watched the Snyder Cut over its opening weekend, and HBO Max viewing figures have almost doubled since its release a month and a half. However, it's important to note that Samba counts a viewer as anyone who has watched just five minutes of a film or TV show - and, given the Snyder Cut runs to four hours in length, those figures aren't really representative of the film's performance. Fans were disappointed when Samba clarified that only one-third of viewers finished the Snyder Cut in its opening weekend.
Screen Rant has spoken exclusively to Samba TV for an update, and they revealed only 39 percent of U.S. households who tuned in to the Snyder Cut actually finished it. In fact, the typical (median) U.S. viewer turned it off after 197 minutes - surprisingly, the scene where Superman enters the Batcave and heads off to join the final battle against Steppenwolf. It's a surprising moment to leave the film, perhaps indicating people watched 3 hours and decided they'd had enough, intending to come back later and finish it off, but never getting around to it.
The Snyder Cut was four hours in length, and Samba's data suggests the popular view - that this film was just too long - was indeed correct. Streaming services measure success against metrics such as engagement and retention; Zack Snyder's Justice League is unlikely to have helped much with either, given 61 percent of U.S. audiences never even finished it. This is sad news for those who are campaigning to "Restore the Snyderverse," because HBO will look at data like this and judge the Snyder Cut to have been of minimal benefit. Contrast this with Godzilla Vs. Kong, which, according to HBO themselves, set a record as having the highest four-day debut viewership of any film or series in the streaming service's history.
Curiously, the Snyder Cut was received differently in other countries. In the U.K., for example, Samba revealed the median viewer watched 225 minutes - meaning they turned off during the Knightmare scene that was intended as a potential setup for future Snyder stories. While this is better news, suggesting U.K. viewers were more engaged with the Snyder Cut, it still implies the average viewer isn't invested in seeing the Snyderverse continue. Zack Snyder's Justice League really does seem to be the end of the road for that particular era of superhero blockbusters.
