The numbers

US$ 160M

More than 100 promotional partners

In June 2013, Ad Age, an American magazine that covers advertising, counted more than 100 promotional partners around the world for Man of Steel, totaling around US$160 million in marketing support. Nokia was the biggest of them, and next to it were Walmart, Sears, Chrysler, Gillette, Kellogg, Twizzler, Carl's Jr. and even the United States National Guard. To give you an idea of ​​size: The Lorax, the previous year's partnership champion, had 70.

This money did not go into the film's budget, as many people repeat. This is what each partner spent on their campaign with the Superman brand. In practice, Warner won a second marketing campaign without paying for it.

Source: Ad Age 06/03/2013 / TIME 06/04/2013

US$ 170M

The Other Count, from the Hollywood Reporter

Three days after Ad Age, the Hollywood Reporter published the same story with different numbers: 98 partners worldwide and around $170 million in support. And the THR text highlighted the detail that almost everyone ignores, that this support comes on top of paid advertising, and not within it. Batman: The Dark Knight Rises, the previous summer, had grossed $150 million.

The two counts are of the same phenomenon, measured on different dates and using the criteria of each house. Warner never commented on either number.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter 06/06/2013

US$ 42.7M

What's left for Warner?

Every year, Deadline sets up a tournament that calculates the real profit of major releases, adding budget, marketing, participation, DVD, VOD and TV. In the 2013 account, published in March 2014, Man of Steel returned US$42.7 million to the studio. It's small for the size of the film, but it's blue: it paid for itself and also planted the entire universe that would come later.

Source: Deadline 03/21/2014

US$ 225M to 258M

The budget has two accounts

The official number is US$225 million, which is what is on Box Office Mojo's record along with the US$670.1 million at the global box office. But analysts interviewed by Deadline in 2014 put the real cost at US$258 million, plus US$58 million in participation for people like Nolan, Costner, Crowe, Amy Adams, Snyder and Cavill.

Both numbers exist and come from a serious source. The first is what is declared by the studio, the second is the estimate of those who model production costs from the outside.

Source: Box Office Mojo 09/17/2026 / Deadline 03/21/2014

130

Promotional partners around the world

Three years after Man of Steel, Warner broke its own house record: 130 partners worldwide, compared to around 100 in the first film. The most unlikely case on the list is Turkish Airlines, which had never worked with a Hollywood studio, paid for a Super Bowl commercial and bought TV, print, outdoor and digital in more than 40 markets. Doritos and Chrysler ran a global campaign, and the Jeep Renegade got a commercial featuring Ben Affleck dressed as Bruce Wayne.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter 03/27/2016

US$ 46.4M

The American piece of the campaign

THR measured, with data from iSpot.tv, how much the campaign cost in the United States alone. It made about $28 million in national TV space, with 20 versions of the trailer shown 2,991 times since January 9, more than Star Wars: The Force Awakens had done. Adding the five co-branded commercials for Jeep, Dodge, General Mills and Turkish Airlines, which were worth US$18.5 million, and the toy ads, with another US$3.2 million, comes to US$46.4 million.

There is no public figure for how much the 130 partnerships in the world were worth. Warner sources told THR about US$150 to 160 million for the worldwide campaign, without official confirmation from the studio.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter 03/27/2016

US$ 105.7M

The profit that Deadline calculated

In the 2016 Deadline tournament, Batman vs Superman appeared in 13th place among the most profitable films of the year, with US$105.7 million in net profit for Warner and a 1.18 return on cash. The model worked with a budget of US$260 million, opening of US$166 million and US$873 million in worldwide gross, US$95 million from China alone.

Source: Deadline 03/23/2017

US$ 250M to 325M

The budget has three versions

Box Office Mojo's record says US$250 million budget and US$874.4 million at the global box office, with an opening of US$166 million in the United States. THR's own report warns that this US$250 million is already net of tax incentives and that sources spoke of US$325 million in gross cost. Deadline, in its profit model, used $260 million.

There are three numbers for the same film, and each one measures something different. None of them is true alone.

Source: Box Office Mojo 09/17/2026 / The Hollywood Reporter 03/27/2016 / Deadline 03/23/2017

No. 1

The most watched in Crave history

In Canada, the film became the most watched title of all time on Crave, Bell Media's streaming service, breaking the record set by the last season of Game of Thrones in 2019. It was Bell herself who announced it, on March 26, 2021, and with an open methodology: Adobe Analytics, minimum of one minute watched, ranking of the first seven days. Outside of streaming, there were more than 1.1 million viewers on the group's TV channels.

Source: Bell Media 03/26/2021 / Newswire 03/26/2021

954,000

British Homes on Sky Cinema

Between March 18 and 24, 2021, 954,000 UK homes saw the color version on Sky Cinema Premiere, as measured by Samba TV. In the first six days there were 896 thousand, compared to 204 thousand for Wonder Woman 1984 in the same period, more than four times more. And there is a beautiful detail in the data: the average number of minutes watched per household was 250, above the film's 242 minutes. There are a lot of people who came back to see the scene again.

The 954 thousand homes are data from Samba TV, not Sky. Neither Sky nor NOW declared a debut record.

Source: Advanced Television 04/01/2021

No. 1

Biggest debut in Binge history

In Australia, Binge announced that the Snyder Cut surpassed The Undoing and recorded the largest daily premiere audience of any title on the platform. The service's executive director, Alison Hurbert-Burns, said they already knew fans wanted to see the film after years of campaigning, and were happy with how many Australians outside the fandom also showed up to see it.

The platform celebrated the record and did not release any absolute numbers.

Source: TV Blackbox 03/29/2021

+140%

Record sales at Claro’s NOW

In Brazil, the film did not premiere on streaming. It was released as a digital rental for R$49.90 on March 18, 2021, because HBO Max would only arrive in Latin America in June of that year. Even so, it broke the sales record for NOW, Claro's on-demand service, with a performance 140% above the house's last major release, which was Wonder Woman 1984. The data is from NOW itself, passed on to Omelete.

Source: Omelete 03/20/2021

1.8M

American Homes on Opening Weekend

Samba TV measured 1.8 million American homes with at least five minutes of film between March 18 and 21, 2021. That's more than the premiere of Falcão and the Winter Soldier on Disney+, which had 1.7 million and which Disney announced as the biggest in the service's history. The Samba cut also showed the film indexing above average in black, Hispanic and Asian homes, and in the San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles markets.

Samba TV measures terrestrial smart TV and does not count cell phones, so this number is a floor, not a ceiling. In the same survey, the film was behind Wonder Woman 1984, which had reached 2.2 million homes at Christmas.

Source: Deadline 03/23/2021

3.2M

Homes in 17 days

In August 2021, Deadline published the ranking of Warner films on HBO Max for the first 17 days, measured by Samba TV. Mortal Kombat led with 5.5 million homes and the Snyder Cut appeared in fifth, with 3.2 million. But the article itself records the context that changes everything: it was the only one on the list that wasn't showing in the cinema at the same time.

It also circulates 3.7 million homes in 39 days. This number exists, but the source is a post from the Samba TV Twitter account, not a report, so it's just here as a note.

Source: Deadline 08/27/2021 / ScreenRant 05/01/2021

1 hour

The movie leaked instead of Tom and Jerry

Ten days before the premiere, HBO Max delivered the entire film by mistake. On March 8, 2021, digital marketing analyst Doug Bass, from North Carolina, clicked on Tom and Jerry and saw the Snyder Cut begin. Variety confirmed that it was indeed Snyder's version, and after about an hour the image lost definition until an error occurred and the film disappeared.

WarnerMedia stated that the film was made available by mistake and that the error was resolved within minutes. Variety found that he was on air for at least an hour.

Source: Variety 03/08/2021 / Deadline 03/08/2021

2 hours

Asia's HBO GO couldn't handle it

On the day of its launch, the service crashed on the other side of the world. HBO Asia took to Facebook to apologize for an unprecedented traffic spike at the film's exclusive premiere and said it was working on a solution. HBO GO was down for around two hours on March 18, 2021, until HBO itself announced that the service had returned.

HBO Asia's posts do not make clear which markets in the region were affected.

Source: GameSpot 03/18/2021

1.48M

HBO Max app downloads

In the week ending March 28, 2021, the HBO Max app had 1.48 million downloads, 64% more than the previous week, and 119.1 million sessions, an increase of 8.9%. The data is from Apptopia, analyzed by Bloomberg. A lot of new installation along with a lot more usage is a good indication of people joining the service because of the film.

Download is not subscription, and session is not new viewer. WarnerMedia never disclosed subscriber gains attributed to the film, and the 1.8 million new subscriptions circulating are the number of Samba TV homes with the changed label.

Source: Bloomberg 03/29/2021 / ScreenRant 03/30/2021

5x

Disc sales leader

Months after streaming, the film arrived on disc and topped both American rankings in the week ending September 11, 2021, the NPD VideoScan, which combines DVD and Blu-ray, and the Blu-ray alone. It sold five times more than second place, and 38% of everything came out in 4K Ultra HD. The Numbers estimates $16.47 million in home video revenue.

Source: Media Play News 09/16/2021 / The Numbers 09/17/2026

No. 1

Flash scene won Oscars Cheer Moment

On the night of the 2022 Oscars, the scene in which Ezra Miller's Flash enters the Speed ​​Force won the Oscars Cheer Moment, chosen by public vote. He was ahead of the meeting of the three Spider-Men in No Return Home and the final battle in Endgame. On the same night, Army of the Dead won #OscarsFanFavorite, with Cinderella in second place.

It wasn't a statuette or a category voted on by the Academy. Voting was via Twitter, from February 14 to March 3, 2022, and the count was publicly accused of manipulation by automated accounts, reported by TheWrap and Rolling Stone.

Source: Variety 03/27/2022 / TheWrap 02/24/2022 / Rolling Stone 07/18/2022