As DC Entertainment undergoes a restructuring process following the merger of its parent company WarnerMedia with Discovery Inc, the company is looking to reformulate its business model. DC leadership has plans to centralize the DC Universe under one creative vision, as stated by Peter Safran, one of the CEO’s of DC Studios. This means that the newly formed company will encompass the development of the different types of content instead of having the development process spread along several subsidiaries.
It’s not yet possible to determine how the restructuring is going to affect the demand for titles from the DC franchise, but we can look back at how the franchise’s shows and movies performed over the last year. According to Parrot Analytics’ data, The Flash was the most in-demand show from the DC universe in 2022, with 36.8 times more demand than the average show over that year, being the only show of that franchise that managed to rank among the top 0.2% shows in the US market. It’s also one of the two shows on the list of top DC shows that have been available on Netflix and not on HBO Max.
The ranking shows the strength of shows based on characters from the Teen Titans team, a sub-group of the DC universe. Three of these shows Titans, Teen Titans Go!, and Teen Titans figured in the second, third, and fourth places, making them the top DC shows available on HBO Max. Two of these shows are animated, which highlights the importance of animated shows to the DC franchise. Four out of 10 shows on the ranking are animations, with the other shows being Young Justice and Harley Quinn.
It’s also worth noting how decentralized DC content production has been. Of the top 10 shows of 2022, half were originally released on Cartoon Network or The CW, while the other half premiered on HBO Max.
When it comes to movies, The Batman is by far the most in-demand DC movie in 2022, with more than twice the demand for the second place, Wonder Woman 1984. The Batman was one of DC’s main releases of 2022, alongside Black Adam. The movie starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson ranked 4th place, being outperformed by The Batman.
Wonder Woman 1984 was the second most in-demand DC movie that year, followed by The Suicide Squad, a movie that has been able to keep high levels of demand even more than six years after its release. The 2016 movie even had more demand in 2022 than its more recent spinoff Birds of Prey.
Other DC movies have been able to keep audiences interested even years after their release. Man of Steel is one of them. The oldest movie on that ranking, Man of Steel still shows outstanding demand almost ten years after being released in 2013.
Of the main movie franchises, DC has the second highest average movie demand, behind only the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). As of the last quarter of 2022, a movie from the MCU had an average demand of 16 times the demand for the average movie, while a movie from the DC universe had around 9 times the demand for the average movie. In 2022 both franchises had a slightly lower demand than in 2018. Besides the decline in demand, the DC Universe managed to surpass other franchises like Star Wars and Harry Potter by the end of 2022, largely due to an increase in demand that started at the beginning of 2022 following the release of The Batman.
