‘It’s better to underpromise and overdeliver’: ‘The Flash’ was destined to die by the hand of its own hype

It sounds incredibly obvious to say it out loud, but the best way to build hype for any movie is to let the general public make up their own minds. On the other side of the coin, everyone proclaiming The Flash to be one of the greatest comic book adaptations ever made was a harbinger of doom, with the DCU epic ending up with nothing but failure in its short and long-term future.

On paper, you can understand why Warner Bros. Discovery David Zaslav ran the gamut of the cultural spectrum to drum up praise for the tortured superhero spectacular, with James Gunn being joined by an unlikely band of supporters that included Stephen King, Tom Cruise, and Jaden Smith, who we can surely assume have never been in the same room together.

And yet, The Flash somehow managed to come in below its initial set of box office expectations, which were dismal enough to begin with. Hitting the nail on the head, Variety sought the opinions of several industry insiders, one of whom offered a savagely straightforward assessment.

“When they called it ‘the greatest superhero movie’ – if it’s not correct, you’re setting yourself up to fail. In this environment, it’s better to underpromise and overdeliver.”

All of those advance previews and early screenings didn’t help, either, with The Flash riding a wave of dwindling momentum after it became clear that it was nowhere near the game-changer and all-timer it had been proclaimed to be months previously. Less than a week after it landed in theaters, it’s already being touted as one of the biggest flops there’s ever going to be, which says it all.