In the cruelest twist of irony, ‘The Flash’ would have lost less money if it went straight to streaming

At the height of Ezra Miller’s controversies, there were a lot of people wondering if The Flash would end up being sent straight to streaming in an attempt to offset any potential losses at the box office.

Of course, Warner Bros. never had any intention of doing so given that the DCEU blockbuster cost $200 million and was being touted as one of the greatest comic book adaptations of all-time, but irony has a way of proving itself to be a cruel mistress. The Flash did indeed go to the big screen, where it promptly flopped and ended up being designated as a bomb almost instantly.

By the time the dust settles, the studio is staring a loss that could be as high as $150 million in the face, something that wouldn’t have happened had the Scarlet Speedster’s long-gestating solo debut avoided the multiplex entirely. While WB would have definitely taken a substantial financial hit were it to yank The Flash from the big screen in favor of Max, it wouldn’t have hit them quite as hard in the pocket as the movie will more than likely end up doing.

The marketing alone is estimated to have set the bean-counters back by $150 million, and with a total of $300 million at the global box office beginning to look outside the realms of possibility, The Flash is an unmitigated catastrophe. At least Shazam! Fury of the Gods cost half as much to make and wasn’t marketed anywhere near as heavily, and even then it went down as one of the superhero genre’s biggest flops in recent memory.