A couple of box office bombs creates reactionary panic for James Gunn’s DCU reboot

The current incarnation of the DCU looks set to go out with a whimper, rather than a bang. Black Adam, Shazam! Fury of the Gods and The Flash have all been box office catastrophes for Warner Bros. That’s especially true for the latter, which was hyped to high heaven as “one of the greatest superhero movies of all-time,” but may lose the studio an incredible $200 million.

The immediate future isn’t looking so hot, either. The Blue Beetle trailers are actually pretty fun, though nobody is expecting this small-scale movie that was intended for HBO Max to do big business. And then there’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which test audiences have apparently hated.

Fortunately for DC fans, a new day is dawning, with James Gunn rebooting the universe with 2025’s Superman: Legacy. Following that will come a new slate of movies with fresh takes on DC heroes, but some of the directorial choices are already giving fans the heebie-jeebies:

Eyebrows were certainly raised when Gunn confirmed that The Flash director Andy Muschietti would be helming The Brave and the Bold. Then again, The Flash was awful because it had the Warner Bros. executives’ fingerprints all over it, with the film trying to chase empty nostalgia rather than telling a good story. But the buck has to stop somewhere, and after The Flash, we can’t deny we have some serious doubts about Muschietti.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is another story altogether. While this much-hyped franchise finale is shaping up to be a box office bomb, it’s actually a pretty damn good movie. Plus, Mangold has hits like Logan, Ford v Ferrari and 3:10 to Yuma under his belt, so we know he can deliver the goods. Swamp Thing may be a long way away anyway, as Mangold is signed up for Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi first.

One box office flop isn’t necessarily a career-ender, though it certainly doesn’t look great on a director’s resume. Warner Bros. execs are nothing if not capricious, so perhaps we’ll see these two directors quietly shuffled off to other projects soon.