The Flash box office returns are an “unmitigated disaster”

The Flash took a very long time to get to the screen. It was in development long before we heard about star Ezra Miller’s rash of terrible behavior, or that James Gunn and Peter Safran would be tossing out the old DC Cinematic Universe and building a new one in its place. The movie is finally out in theaters, but it finds itself kind of marooned; fans know that there isn’t going to be a follow-up to this film, so some may be less willing to bother seeing it.

And indeed, The Flash pulled in just $55 million in the U.S. and Canada over its opening weekend, and $135.7 million worldwide. Those obviously aren’t small numbers, but they’re well below expectations. The Flash cost around $200 million to make, and the rule of thumb is that it costs about double a film’s budget to market it. You do the math.

“The movie should be opening at $120 million domestic,” an anonymous industry veteran told Variety. “This is an unmitigated disaster.” And this is after Shazam! Fury of the Gods bombed earlier this year, and there are two more DC films coming: Blue Beetle and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. All told, these four films together — budget and marketing — cost somewhere between $1.1 and $1.2 billion, and there’s no guarantee they’ll make that back. “Disaster” might not be an exaggeration.

The Flash box office could spell trouble for Warner Bros. Discovery

Things could pick up when Gunn and Safran roll out movies like Superman: Legacy, which is supposed to kick off a new cinematic universe. But few studios seem to have stopped to consider that maybe cinematic universes are the problem. There have been around 55 movies based on comic books in the past decade, many of them part of interconnected mega-franchises. The fatigue is showing. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania had a relatively weak showing earlier this year, and that was supposed to be a turning point for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Of course, as one executive points out, studios can usually overcome this if their movies are good. The third Guardians of the Galaxy movie did quite well, and the new Spider-Man movie Across the Spider-Verse is currently exceeding expectations at the box office even though it’s part of a series. But the most successful DC superhero movies to come out of Warner Bros. Discovery in the past several years have been Joker and The Batman, both of which stand on their own. There may be a lesson there.

The superhero boom is still ongoing, but it feels like more executives are pausing to consider if there isn’t another way. In the meantime, there will be plenty of entertainment out there for the spandex faithful:

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels