It’s not looking too good for Warner Bros. Discovery’s ambitious direction with The Flash. They were all-in by not even promoting most of their DC line-up ahead of the DC Cinematic Universe revival. all their chips were set in the film that was mired with controversies due to its leading star, Ezra Miller, being caught in a slew of criminal acts. Now, the film has finally been released after a nine-year-long production hell and sadly, it’s not keeping up with what CEO David Zaslav may have hoped for.
After a decent take of $9.7M in previews, the film opened to around $24.5M on Friday, which includes those previews. While the film is very likely still take the top spot, it doesn’t seem like the film might hit the hoped $85M over the weekend. It’s heading towards a similar opening to 2022’s Black Adam and 2018’s Aquaman. Though the latter had the holiday season to rack up more at the box office than the former.
The film went all-in with a multiverse storyline, nostalgia bait with Michael Keaton back as Batman after 31 years, and Snyderverse callbacks like the return of Michael Shannon’s Zod. Most of the promotion mostly ignored Miller and primarily used the rest of its cast to promote the team. Yet, the big issue is the B CinemaScore, which puts it lower than Black Adam and Shazam! Fury of the Gods.
Audiences have become quite a bit pickier in their cinematic flair. So, just doing the usual won’t keep you strong at the box office. Even Marvel isn’t safe as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania pulled in a similar CinemaScore but seems to have a bigger life once it hit streaming. After training audiences that release windows are quite a bit shorter, they are willing (especially families) to wait it out if there’s not something that keeps them coming back.
Deadline believes the film is heading to a likely $60M 3-day opening, which is even further away from the lower expectations the films had. It could use the Juneteenth holiday to grow to $70M over 4 days but that is even lower than what an Ant-Man film managed in its opening weekend earlier this year. Perhaps billing this film as “the greatest superhero movie ever made” has greatly backfired with the film having a low PostTrak exit of only 59% recommendation.
That isn’t the only depressing news, as Elemental isn’t looking much better either. It’s likely not going to open above $30M, as it currently is projected to hit $28.5M over three days. It likely not even outpace Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse going into its third weekend. Estimates did, however, expect an opening around that size. It did get an A CinemaScore and people seem to love it. So, perhaps it can make up for it in upcoming weekends similar to some of Pixar’s earliest releases.
Surprisingly, it seems that this weekend is generally not a good one for cinemas. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has dropped considerably in its third weekend, as it currently stands to drop 68%, which could rival any of the biggest superhero drops throughout the last few years. It is ahead of Transformers: The Last Knight slightly, but it’s unclear if it might even break $130M in cinemas.
