Warner Bros ‘set to lose over $200 million’ in box office bomb ‘catastrophe’

Film studios regularly make gambles at the box office, giving budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars to movies that could be huge hits or box office bombs.

The latest it seems is Warner Bros’ DC comic book movie The Flash, which had a budget of $200-220 million and currently has global takings of only $215 million.

Warner Bros has faced a challenge with the movie given the controversy surrounding title star Ezra Miller’s private life and the fact the movie is at the tail-end of a DC franchise that’s about to have a massive reboot.

And after mixed reviews, The Flash – which brought back Michael Keaton’s Batman after 30 years – looks like it’s facing a monumental loss.

The blockbuster’s second week box office drop of 73 per cent was the second worst for a comic book movie after Jared Leto’s Morbius.

The Flash may have taken $215 million worldwide with a predicted total of $280-310 million, yet box office guru Luiz Fernando points out: “Painful, but needs to be mentioned: if #TheFlash ends up within the projection, since studio just keeps half share from #BoxOffice global grosses, it won’t even pay its total 150M marketing campaign. 

“WB would have lost less money releasing it on Max or not releasing it at all.”

The expert added: “Not to mention apart from the expensive promo campaign, #TheFlash still has a 190M budget price tag.

This film may easily lose more than 200M for WB when all is said and done, a financial catastrophe as dangerous as Justice League, which led to a major shakeup at WB in 2017.”

The outgoing DCEU franchise still has Blue Beetle and Aquaman 2 to release in cinemas this year before James Gunn reboots with his DCU starring the newly cast David Corenswet as Superman.