Courtesy: Warner Bros.
Love it, hate it, or fundamentally confused by it, there's no denying that Warner Bros.' Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has had a successful run so far with a cumulative worldwide total of $489.6 million to date. While the $166 domestic opening weekend total was slightly lower than the studio's projected $170 million haul, it's still a record for a DC film, a March opening, and an Easter weekend opening - Furious 7, the second-biggest Easter weekend opening ever, generated nearly $20 million less than Batman v Superman did in its debut weekend. So for the sake of this article, let's just agree to set any personal feelings about the film itself aside and focus on the fact this movie is still considered successful from a financial standpoint.
On one hand, let's be honest - it was never not going to make bank at the box office. The first time fans will see DC's Holy Trinity in Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman all together in a live-action role for the first time? Even if the film were only mediocre, hardcore fans were always going to flock to the theater out of excitement and the general audience out of curiosity.
But on the other, Warner Bros. had its work cut out for it with erasing the bad press still being generated two and a half years later by the divisive Man of Steel, as well as getting more casual fans on board with a world that was rumored to have concerned studio executives due to its darkness. So hats off to the marketing team, because they did an excellent job of world-building with the trailers and TV spots, and particularly with the online, viral content. And it was vital that the marketing campaign got the general audience to relate to and identify with the world that was set up in the film. It was, after all, the only world they were getting, the one that sets up the entirety of DC's cinematic universe.
The campaign jumped right in to focus on perhaps the most divisive character in the lead-up to the film's release: Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor. While the casting of Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Gal Godot as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman was met with the typical backlash from cynical fans, the true head-scratcher for audiences was Eisenberg in the role of DC's most iconic villain aside from the Joker. A young, Silicon Valley brogrammer type with flowing locks didn't exactly match the image of Lex Luthor in the audience's collective mind, hardcore fan or not. Fan skepticism and backlash was understandable. It was a strange new spin on Luthor that needed to be accepted by the audience before the release. So time and effort were put into building the world of Metropolis and Gotham, but more notably, the world of this younger, hipster version of Lex Luthor.
Courtesy: Warner Bros.
His LexCorp Industries was given a website, and Lex himself had a Twitter account, strengthening the idea that he was a real person walking around in the world, and not just that, but one fans could interact with in real time. The most creative piece of marketing was the interview that Fortune did with Lex Luthor in which he spoke about inheriting the company from his father and the new direction in which he moved it. As a piece of marketing, it worked: It addressed in an organic way why this Lex Luthor is so different from the one we've always known - not that Lex, then, but his son, and not his father's LexCorp, either (or that of old school fans), but a more modernized version. There was also an in-depth feature interview with Luthor in Wired that admittedly was full of overwrought dialogue from the mogul, but was still a very interesting piece of marketing that helped paint a picture of this new, controversial Lex Luthor - not just as a fictional character, but as a living, breathing man, a human being. Just like the audience. And the most practical bit of marketing came during last year's New York Comic Con, when LexCorp Industries provided free WiFi for the duration of the convention.
While the viral, native content was focused on Lex Luthor, the rest of the marketing expanded into other forms of social media, as well, most notably Snapchat. Fans were able to download four different selfie lenses (two for Batman and one each for Superman and Wonder Woman), and in the week leading up to the premiere, Snapchat Discovery ran a "Batman v Superman" channel for a full 24 hours. It was another phase of the plan to get fans to engage with the world that Snyder had built, with behind-the-scenes interviews with Snyder and the cast, concept art, and exclusive footage. And, for those who are Batman fans, Warner Bros. has run a cool, cross-promotion in which you can step into the Batcave and explore it through virtual reality, another immersive piece of marketing that has the potential to make audiences feel personal ownership of the world.
As a world that a general audience can relate to, Warner Bros. has its work cut out for it with the DCEU. It's dark. It's grim. And it is wholly foreign to most potential audiences. Building an interactive marketing campaign that humanized some of the characters and made fans feel as if they could connect more closely with them and the world in which they moved was of vital importance to the success of the film. Whether or not it's a world that those fans will want to return to again remains to be seen. But giving them a more personal involvement with it in the lead up to the film's release was certainly a smart and clever start.
