Having had enough time to sift through the wreckage of The Flash, it’s become clear that Warner Bros. getting far too confident in the long-gestating comic book adaptation was the worst thing that could have ever happened to it.
Spending close to a decade in development hell and burning through numerous writers and directors in the process, the only constant throughout the entire debacle was star Ezra Miller, who then ended up creating several firestorms when their widely-publicized personal problems hoovered up all the headlines.
Despite rolling out the red carpet and sharing ringing endorsements from James Gunn, Stephen King, Tom Cruise, and Jaden Smith to name just an eclectic foursome of its many backers, all those advance screenings ironically got the word out that The Flash was nowhere near as good as we were repeatedly being told it was.
As a result, the Scarlet Speedster’s solo debut tanked at the box office to secure itself an unwanted reputation as one of the biggest bombs of all-time, with the hype machine having well and truly malfunctioned before immediately exploding and shattering into a million pieces.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the maligned misfire has also flopped on streaming, with its first appearance on the Nielsen rankings painting a damning picture. Having racked up a measly 392 million minutes, it barely managed to outpace Netflix’s terrible blockbuster Heart of Stone, its animated adventure The Monkey King, Hulu’s panned sequel Vacation Friends 2, and even Moana‘s resurgence on Disney Plus, all of which have been available on-demand for longer.
That’s disastrous for such a heavily-hyped project, but it’s unfortunately the legacy of The Flash in microcosm.