The Flash Continues Historic Box Office Collapse
The Flash has had a second-weekend collapse of over 70 percent at the box office, ensuring it will lose Warner Bros. Discovery a historic sum of money.
After suffering an embarrassing defeat at the hands of Disney’s Elemental at the start of its second week, The Flash has continued to suffer major financial losses at the box office, finishing behind the most recent Ant-Man film and performing even worse than Morbius. According to a recent write-up in The Hollywood Reporter, the Ezra Miller-led film has fallen by over 70 percent in its second week, with little hope for recuperating its massive budget.
Conversely, newly released films such as the Jennifer Lawrence-led No Hard Feelings and Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City are exceeding expectations, set to rapidly blow both The Flash and Elemental out of the water.
While Warner Brothers executives seemed to place a lot of significance on The Flash, audiences don’t seem to see the value in the film. James Gunn‘s recent appointment as creative head of the DCU and the subsequent news that the franchise would be rebooted nearly shelved the film, which spent nearly a decade suffering setbacks during development until Gunn allegedly watched an early cut of The Flash and determined it was simply too good to go to waste.
Unfortunately, the controversy surrounding the film only continued to grow further when star Ezra Miller allegedly engaged in a series of strange and seemingly random acts of criminal violence. The highly publicized stories of Miller’s alleged crimes seemed to hurt the film before its release, with many fans concerned about whether or not they should be supporting the 30-year-old star by seeing the film in theaters.
After successfully keeping Miller away from the public for a few months and releasing a series of highly enticing trailers featuring cameo appearances from Michael Keaton‘s Batman, it seemed, for a time, that the film had restored the public’s interest.
Unfortunately for Warner Brothers, The Flash only saw a $55 million opening weekend against a massive budget of over $200 million. These figures dipped significantly beneath initial projections and studio expectations, bombing even harder than Black Adam‘s opening weekend, which took in only $67 million and was previously considered one of the worst outings in franchise history. Apparently, the film’s second-week projections are even worse, with a more than 70 percent drop in its already dwindling revenue, with Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse dominating with more than $300 million against a budget of $100 million.
At this rate, the studio may never see a return on investment from The Flash, with the film serving as the final whimpering nail in the coffin for the Zack Snyder era of the DCU. James Gunn had initially planned for The Flash to serve as something of a bridge between the Snyder-verse and his own cinematic universe, though no specifics have been shared with the public regarding what specific elements of the film he plans to fold in.
While the second-week numbers paint an abysmal picture for The Flash, there could still be hope for the film on streaming, but only if Warner Brothers can embrace the failed box office figures and premiere the film on Max to a wider audience. If the studio attempts to sweep the film under the rug as though it never existed, as they seem to have done with Black Adam, the film will have gone down in history as a historic failure.
