The Flash Suffers Another Humiliating Defeat At The Box Office
The Flash was beaten out at the box office this past week by Pixar's Elemental.
After suffering major setbacks during production, years-long delays, and a few legal issues with the star of the film, DC’s The Flash has now bombed at the box office. According to a write-up in The Hollywood Reporter, the Ezra Miller-led film closed out its opening weekend with abysmal numbers, finishing behind Sony’s Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse and Disney’s latest animated feature, Elemental.
Apparently, Elemental bombed as well, taking in only $30 million and ranking among the lowest debuts for a Pixar movie ever made while still edging out The Flash.
Though fans of the DCU patiently waited for the controversial film to finally hit the big screen, The Flash ironically took the slowest route to arriving at the box office humanly possible, spending nearly a decade trapped in development.
Once it was announced that James Gunn would be taking over the future of the DCU and wiping the slate clean by demolishing and rebuilding the cinematic universe from scratch, many fans felt as though The Flash would never see the light of day. That was until whispers from corporate Warner Bros. board rooms seemed to suggest the film was such an excellent installment in the franchise that Gunn simply couldn’t stand to see it shelved.
Once The Flash was finally in post-production and preparing to land at the box office, Ezra Miller spent weeks allegedly engaged in a series of strange and disturbing crimes, many of which were highly publicized by the 24-hour news cycle, making the 30-year-old star one of the most high profile figures in Hollywood for a brief time.
Warner Bros. finally released the movie, with one production designer reportedly stating the film is so excellent it may actually make audiences forget about Miller’s alleged crimes.
Unfortunately, it seems that fans weren’t convinced, as The Flash bombed at the box office, taking home only $55 million on opening weekend, well below the studios’ expectations and even worse than last year’s Black Adam outing, which famously bombed with a return of only $67 million.
Projections anticipated a box office smash of $100 million or more to offset The Flash‘s exceedingly pricey $200 million production price tag. The film even tapped into a number of high-profile crossovers and expensive CGI efforts to fold in nearly every iteration of Batman, Superman, and other flagship DC heroes in an effort to coax fans into the theater.
While The Flash was initially able to beat out Elemental at the box office, the Disney film boasts a significantly higher CinemaScore, and a wider appeal of controversy-free consumption to offer audiences at large. The news that Elemental has pulled ahead of The Flash is still shocking nonetheless.
Of course, the entire DCU is soon to be rebooted under James Gunn’s creative umbrella, making the consequences of The Flash‘s box office outing largely inconsequential, though Warner Bros. is certainly feeling the sting from the final dying whimpers of their cinematic universe.
