How did it all go so wrong so fast for The Flash? It was riding high on a wave of expectation, buzz, off-the-charts preview scores, and high early tracking. Now, it is just a shell of its early potential. Weekend box-office tracking figures are pointing to The Flash having a near-unprecedented 75% second-weekend drop. After opening at $55.7 million last weekend, this weekend is looking like a tiny $14 million take. The figure for Friday was $4.3 million. Independent movies got higher than that. If you ever wanted to see The Flash but don’t like other people, then going now could be a plan as theaters must be deserted.
If this performs in line with the projections then that is worse than the 66% second-weekend drop of Green Lantern back in 2011. Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse remains ahead weeks after being released. Even Pixar’s poorly performing Elemental is on track to beat The Flash.
The Flash could even also lose out to the R-rated Jennifer Lawrence comedy No Hard Feelings which beat the Friday score of the DC tentpole and is tracking above it.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will close out the top five with $10.6 million, bringing its total box office to $121.9 million so far. Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City had a wider release this weekend and pulled in $7.5 million.
Rest assured, DC now has a major, major problem. Their new DCU is to launch into the headwinds of total superhero fatigue, cape franchise failure, and cinema simply moving on. There is also a general stench of failure around the DC brand and its box office. Meanwhile, creative head honcho James Gunn was enthusiastically praising The Flash while appointing its director, Andy Muschietti, as the director of the Batman feature in phase one of that new DCU. Not only does this all now feel questionable, it makes real the fear that the DCU may be DOA.
The smart course of action would be to call a halt before real money is spent, shutter it completely for fifteen years, and then bring it back after a break. This would follow on from when the MCU dies it’s natural, and clearly slowly approaching death. This is Hollywood, though. Smart is not a familiar concept.
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