Why 'The Flash' Box Office Bust Is an 'Unmitigated Disaster' for Warner Bros.

Despite no small amount of fanfare from the studio, Warner Bros. The Flash underperformed at the box office, earning just $55.7 million domestically over its three-day opening weekend. The Juneteenth holiday gave the film only a slight bump, totaling $61.2 over four days.

The film had an uphill battle from the beginning, perhaps most notably due to the flurry of assault and misconduct allegations plaguing star Ezra Miller, starting when he was caught on video choking a woman in Iceland back in April 2020. That was months before The Flash even went into production, giving the studio ample time to back out. Instead, the studio and director have stood by Miller.

Miller also failed to do any press for movie, other than showing up to its Hollywood premiere. Most talk shows are currently on hiatus due to the writer's strike, but it seems unlikely they would have made any appearances regardless. However, their personal issues ultimately may not have mattered to audiences.

"No one would care if Miller promoted the picture; he isn’t a movie star and has no following," one insider pointed out to The Hollywood Reporter.

Yet, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav continued to back the film, even after shelving Batgirl in 2022 and canceling sequels to the more promising Man of Steel starring Henry Cavill and Wonder Woman franchises, all due to backlash from fans. Zaslav even went so far as to outright call The Flash "the best superhero movie" of all time at CinemaCon in April, which initially seemed to give it a positive word of mouth.

But all things considered, The Flash still fell short of the modest $70 million it was expected to pull in over its opening weekend.

"The movie should be opening at $120 million domestic," an industry veteran told Variety. "This is an unmitigated disaster."

Another problem plaguing the movie is new DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran's plans to completely reboot the DC franchise in 2025. This means that The Flash and the Shazam sequel that already bombed earlier this year—along with the upcoming Blue Beetle and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom in August and December—will die with the current franchise. All four films went into production before the current regime.

"It’s a perhaps unavoidable but terrible case of timing," a source at a rival studio likewise told Variety. "Audiences don’t feel like they have to invest two hours of their life because it’s not going to matter going forward."

Not to mention, on top of everything else, it seems that audiences are cooling off to superhero fare after an inundation of over 50 movies based on comic book characters over the past decade alone. Even Marvel has been struggling to fill seats, which suggests that this could just be the start of the new DC Universe's woes.

“It is unfathomable to me why [Zaslav] and James Gunn promise how wonderful any picture or new plan will be months into the future. The public doesn’t care and isn’t aware of their prognostications,” one veteran studio executive explained to The Hollywood Reporter. "Let the product talk."