Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Studios got more bad news yesterday when The Flash crawled to $175 million in worldwide receipts Thursday, after falling to third place on box office charts behind Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Elemental. These are disastrous results for WBD, whose new executive leadership has suffered a series of self-inflicted wounds on a regular basis since taking over.
Ezra Miller stars in “The Flash”
The Flash is now the seventh DCEU movie in a row that will fail to gross more than $500 million, and will probably be the seventh in a row to fail to top $400 million.
While Marvel Studios’ own superhero releases experienced their own decline in average revenue with their Multiverse Saga, the MCU’s plateauing theater revenue is still squarely in blockbuster range again, now that theater attendance is slowly recovering from pandemic shutdowns and slowdowns — aside from the undeniable disappointment with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which is the only third entry of an MCU franchise to see a fall in revenue from the previous two releases.
Across the Spider-Verse topped $500 million as it took the throne Wednesday and is already a terrific success story for Sony that should hit $550+ million. Pixar’s Elemental still has plenty of international markets left in which to open, but at just $59 million in the bank so far it’s underperforming and will struggle to reach $100 million domestically.
The Flash should be able to pull in $20 million from North America this weekend, but lackluster audience word of mouth could push that figure as low as $15 million. At this point I’ve learned not to underestimate how badly things can go for the DCEU.
But if DC Studios co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran needed any additional proof and motivation for their choice to reboot DC cinema, they certainly got it with The Flash. As I said previously, I don’t think Gunn or Safran are the sort to celebrate a film’s failure just because they weren’t involved and/or because it’s convenient for their own plans.
While I understand and respect anyone’s decision not to see The Flash because of Ezra Miller’s public action, and I myself said outright that Miller shouldn’t have been hired for The Flash and shouldn’t be retained in the role, I also realize most people working on films are not famous or rich or powerful and so they don’t always have the luxury of refusing to work on a project and getting blackballed by a studio. We can and should criticize the studio’s choices, but it’s hard for me to blame everyone else involved in the picture, and some of them in the early stages agreed to work on the film because they felt there might be more to the early accusations against Miller (and they had less access to information than higher-ups did).
The point is, Gunn and Safran are probably disappointed not only to see any DC property — or superhero property for that matter — fail, they’re probably unhappy to see so many other people who worked on the movie suffer from its failure as well.
That said, the failure of The Flash removes any pressure Gunn and Safran might have felt if The Flash had been a runaway hit like many of us (me included) thought it could be. If Shazam! Fury of the Gods had simply performed at around $400 million — still too low but not as shockingly awful as the actual $133.8 million — then a blockbuster performance by The Flash would’ve helped position Blue Beetle for a potentially modestly successful run in the $400-500 million range and might have helped increase buzz for Aquaman 2’s Christmas debut.
All of which could have made WBD leadership and investors question the wisdom of rebooting just when DC was getting its feet under it again. Which, in turn, adds to the pressure to keep at least some elements and characters established in the past decade of DCEU movies.
Now, however, things are the reverse. The Flash failing puts even more pressure on Blue Beetle and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom later this year. And I suspect that the lingering “meh” sentiment toward DC movies among global mainstream audiences is a bad sign for Blue Beetle regardless of how much anyone insists it’s the first new movie of the DCU — a claim that’s hard to square with the fact it’s sandwiched between The Flash and Aquaman 2, plus the fact the studio also says Superman: Legacy is the formal launch of the newly minted DCU.
Whether it’s tied into the DCEU or not, the film’s placement on the release schedule and the fuzziness of where it even falls in the future DCU plans could lead most viewers to perceive it as another release among the rest of what we’ve seen lately from WBD and DC. If so, that’s dangerous for Blue Beetle’s box office prospects.
And the higher the odds of Blue Beetle suffering from the DCEU curse, the higher the odds the stain on the DCEU brand could wind up tainting Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom’s box office chances. It’s true that the first Aquaman was a $1.1 billion Christmas blockbuster, and the sequel enjoys the same holiday release, so I think it will play better than the last seven DCEU films, but I also think the odds rise significantly that it might not meet expectations and could wind up below $1 billion.
It all depends on how good the film is and how well audiences like it. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom needs an A-range Cinemascore from viewers and more positive critical reception than The Flash, and for those factors to give it long legs through the holiday season.
While the first film’s success takes some of the edge off concerns, it’s also true that plenty of DCEU movies performed well in the opening phase before the downturns started, including 2017’s Wonder Woman at $822 million followed by Wonder Woman 1984 with $170 million in 2020.
If Blue Beetle has only a modest run or disappoints like the last several years of DCEU have done, then we get one step closer to what’s probably the best outcome at this point — a total reboot that leaves all of the past DC movies, casts, and incarnations behind in favor of a 100% fresh start (with the exception of Matt Reeves’ The Batman movies and spinoffs which had better remain active or I will possibly give up hope entirely on DC movies). And at this point, that’s what I expect to see happen.
Be sure to check back soon for more updates, dear readers, as the summer box office season continues.
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