It looks like DC FanDome was a huge success as the global virtual event did everything Comic-Con@home should have but didn’t.
According to WarnerMedia, the DC FanDome: Hall of Heroes event generated 22 million views across 220 countries and territories over its 24-hour run, via the in-house player, live streams by comic book influencers, and other content generated by fans watching the event. The film, TV, and video game trailers released during DC FanDome — including for Wonder Woman 1984, The Batman, and the Snyder Cut of Justice League— have pulled in over 150 million views since Saturday.
DC FanDome also proved to be huge on social media, trending on Twitter in 53 markets, and on YouTube in 82 markets. This was an event that truly served the fans & it offered them reveals that made the event something to look forward to. Did anyone really expect a trailer for The Batman? No way! However, the fact that the event offered these surprises is what allowed WarnerMedia & DC to pull this off much better than the ill-fated Comic-Con@home back in July.
A lot of planning went into creating DC FanDome. According to Warner Bros. TV Group president and chief marketing officer Lisa Gregorian & Blair Rich, president of worldwide marketing for Warner Bros. Pictures Group, the idea for DC FanDome first sparked in April, soon after the industry, the country, and most of the world had effectively shut down amid the COVID-19 pandemic. With the cancelation of E3 and the inevitable cancelation of San Diego Comic-Con, the studio knew that the traditional methods of fan outreach would not be happening for the foreseeable future. This is when Rich and Gregorian engaged with as many marketing employees as they could find across every division of the company that drew from DC — film, TV, video games, comic books, and consumer marketing — to come up with a way of recreating a fan convention on a virtual stage. All told, Rich and Gregorian say they shot the vast majority of the panels — featuring more than 300 people on camera and roughly 250 behind the scenes — over a two-week period through the end of July. This gave the production team just three weeks to assemble everything together. The final assembly for the eight-hour Hall of Heroes event was completed roughly a week before its August 22 debut. The execs declined to disclose the budget for DC FanDome but according to a source, via “Variety”, with knowledge of the event, the absence of any travel or lodging expenses meant DC FanDome cost Warner Bros. less than they would have spent for a comparable fan event at a live convention like San Diego Comic-Con.
