Early ‘Blue Beetle’ box office neck-and-neck with ‘Shazam! Fury of the Gods,’ which ended up as one of the superhero genre’s biggest-ever bombs

As much as the early prognosis of securing DC’s worst opening weekend for a wide release in over 40 years has dissipated, Blue Beetle still has a mountain to climb in order to turn a profit.

It doesn’t help that the superhero sandbox is in the midst of a terrible streak at the box office dating back half a decade to Aquaman becoming its highest-grossing installment by a substantial margin, and the early signs regarding Jaime Reyes’ origin story breaking out from the pack and avoiding the dire returns to have blighted the series for years aren’t looking too great right off the bat.

The latest estimates have Blue Beetle netting $3.3 million in Thursday previews, which is a solid-if-unspectacular start. However, when you consider that it’s only $100,000 behind Shazam! Fury of the Gods, then things start to get a little concerning when you remember the latter limped out of theaters as one of the biggest flops in the history of the comic book adaptation, right before The Flash came along and tanked even harder.

Even more worrying is that the pair carry roughly identical price tags of around $125 million, with Fury of the Gods widely rumored to have lost about the same amount by the time its theatrical run came to an end.

The good news is that regardless of how things turn out, the title hero has been guaranteed a future as part of James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DCU, although it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how the trolls are going to react if Blue Beetle ends up dying on the vine in multiplexes before being welcomed with open arms into the DCU’s next reboot.