It’s not a fun time to be Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav. Case in point, the resounding failure of “The Flash.”
Andy Muschietti’s DCEU film earned $4.5M yesterday, an 81% drop from its domestic opening day. This is not good. It’s turning into a historic bomb.
Yesterday’s total was $1M behind ‘Across the Spider-Verse,’ a superhero movie released more than a month that still seems to have some major legs, and might even finish at the top of the box-office this weekend.
Truth be told, Zaslav wasn’t at Warner when this one got greenlit, but it is now his problem and it’s a major one. That $220 million budget sticks out like a sore thumb. He needs to clean up this mess, but what will his next move be?
“The Flash” will be at around $83 million, domestically, by Monday morning. Will it even finish its run at $100 million? Its numbers are now behind the much-maligned ‘Green Lantern’ movie from 2011.
We're witnessing box office history right before our very eyes. Ezra Miller will be the face of the biggest hollywood flop in a decade, the other comparable titles I’m thinking of are last decade’s “John Carter” and “The Lone Ranger”.
What happened? Was it moviegoers refusing to pay their hard-earned money for serial criminal Ezra Miller? How about the much-mentioned superhero fatigue that every box office pundit keeps repeating, ad nauseam, every time a DC and Marvel movie underperforms?
“The Flash” was being hyped up for months, test screenings were excellent, its 7.3 IMDB score and 84% user rating on Rotten Tomatoes didn’t signal red flags. What’s the deal here? Movie audiences were clearly turned off by it.