When Shazam! Fury of the Gods fell flat on its face at the box office, it was claimed that one of the major reasons behind the sequel’s failure was the fact it had already been rendered obsolete prior to release by way of James Gunn and Peter Safran announcing a full-scale reboot was lurking just around the corner. Looking at The Flash, it might be fair to say those assumptions were right on the money.
Andy Muschietti’s madcap multiversal adventure hauled in a lukewarm $55 million across its opening weekend, which is borderline disastrous for a film that cost around $200 million to produce and an estimated $100 million and change to market. In fact, there are two titles in particular that are worth bringing up for very different reasons, which underlines the size of the challenge that lies in front of the new co-CEOs to get audiences back onside.
The first is Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern, a DC Comics epic that cost roughly the same amount and featured similar levels of poorly-rendered CGI spectacle. The notorious steaming turd of cinema opened almost on a par with The Flash thanks to a $53 million opening a dozen years ago, before going on to wind up as an all-timer of a money-losing disaster.
The second is Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever, which brought in $52 million across its first three days on the big screen, which is somewhere between galling and damning because it released 28 years ago. If you adjust those numbers for inflation, it equates to over $100 million, which is where The Flash was forecast to open not so much as a month ago.
Once the international numbers come in the picture will become clearer, but things are not looking good for the Scarlet Speedster, and potentially even worse for the DCU at large.
