This weekend, The Flash passed the $200 million mark at the worldwide box office. While hitting a benchmark like that is usually cause for celebration (especially after just over a week in theaters), it might be as good as it gets for the Fastest Man Alive.
Reliable box office analyst Luiz Fernando believes the movie is currently eyeing an eventual global run of only $280 million - $300 million.
He goes on to explain that, if The Flash falls somewhere in that projection, it won't even make back its $150 million marketing spend (never mind production costs). As a result, Warner Bros. Discovery would have actually lost less by either not releasing the movie or dropping it on the Max streaming service.
By the time all is said and done, The Flash will almost certainly lose something like $200 million, a catastrophic result which is bound to raise some hard questions at the studio in the months ahead.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, of course, and Warner Bros. likely believed that key endorsements from David Zaslav, James Gunn, and Tom Cruise would be enough to guarantee a hit. As well as hailing The Flash as being "one of the greatest superhero movies ever made," the studio held an early CinemaCon screening meant to build hype (and most of the social media reactions from that were glowing).
Moviegoers ended up rejecting the DC Comics adaptation, though, probably because they've grown tired of the brand thanks to movies like Wonder Woman 1984, Black Adam, and Shazam! Fury of the Gods. Knowing a reboot is on the way also doesn't seem to have helped increase interest in the current DCEU.
With this movie on course to become a financial disaster in the same vein as 2017's Justice League, there's already speculation about whether this could lead to another major shakeup.
That's already happened courtesy of DC Studios, but as Fernando posits, should Blue Beetle and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom bomb, "Will WB afford [to produce] CBMs in 2024 without cutting their budgets considerably? Will investors risk their $ again at WB?"
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