Warner Bros. Discovery seemed convinced that The Flash would be one of the year's biggest box office hits, hence why they hyped it up as being among the "greatest" superhero movies ever made.
Andy Muschietti's DC Comics adaptation was anything but and it bombed during its opening weekend with a $55 million debut (very nearly suffering the same record drop as Morbius during its second weekend in theatres). So, how did it fare during week three?
Not great.
Dropping to eighth place, The Flash made only $5 million, a -67% drop from last weekend. That takes its domestic total to $99.2 million and the movie now made only $245.3 million worldwide after three weeks in theaters. This thing is on track to be perhaps the biggest superhero movie box office flop ever released, especially with a rumoured production and marketing budget of over $300 million.
Still, it's not the only movie to have an unexpectedly bad debut as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is really struggling.
While it opened at #1 with $60 million, it's a result that's widely being described as a disaster for Harrison Ford's send-off as the iconic adventurer. The movie earned $130 million globally, but this is less than half of what Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull grossed during its debut in 2008 ($272.1 million).
In terms of what went wrong, it appears the decision to premiere Dial of Destiny at Cannes was an early blunder on Disney's part. That was the wrong audience to play a movie like this in front of, and those early reviews seemingly killed much of its positive buzz.
However, audiences also rejected James Mangold's farewell to the character as the movie was awarded a so-so B+ CinemaScore. It seems people didn't want Indy to get the Logan treatment, while the franchise is one that appears to skew older and didn't bring in younger moviegoers who, simply put, have no real relationship with the property.
It's said this is another movie with a combined $300+ million spent on production and marketing, a sign Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is on track to be a box office flop. Only time will tell whether this has an impact on Mangold helming a Star Wars movie for Disney and Lucasfilm.