With Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny now playing in theaters – not to mention the likes of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Oppenheimer, and Barbie looming just over the horizon – The Flash getting pushed further and further down the box office pecking order was always going to happen.
Of course, nobody would have guessed that the DCU blockbuster touted as one of the greatest comic book adaptations of all-time would have bombed long before then, with the most recent ominous undertones hinting that Warner Bros. would have actually saved itself a great deal of money had the film been pulled from theaters and sent straight to streaming.
Ironically, we’re only a couple of weeks away from The Flash landing on VOD anyway, which is just as well considering it’s about to set another embarrassing franchise record. Per box office analyst Luiz Fernando, Andy Muschietti’s madcap multiversal adventure is being pulled from over 1500 screens in its third weekend to make room for Dial of Destiny and other holdovers that are performing better in terms of ticket sales, which is of course the steepest drop for any DCU installment to date.
One tiny little sliver of a silver lining is that The Flash has at least crossed $200 million globally, but at this point that’s like using a thimble to empty a sinking ship. Blue Beetle is only weeks away from release, too, so you’ve got to imagine there’s going to be a lot of worried people at the studio wondering if the beleaguered superhero saga is set to endure its third cataclysmic flop of the year.