SPOILER alert: This story mentions a few significant plot developments in “The Flash,” currently playing in theaters.
In the climax of “The Flash,” Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) watches helplessly as his timeline-hopping escapades cause several other superhero universes to careen into each other and become obliterated in the process. Ironically, Warner Bros. is facing almost an identical dilemma —and the stakes could be nearly as existential.
“The Flash” is the second of four mega-budgeted DC adaptations the studio is set to release this year, starting with “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” in March, and followed by “Blue Beetle” and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” in August and December. Yet these movies were conceived and greenlit by an executive team that all have departed the studio; in their place, new DC Studios chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran have announced they will reboot the DC franchise in 2025, starting with Gunn’s “Superman: Legacy.”
That’s left Warners in one of the worst rock-and-a-hard-place conundrums in memory: Its 2023 slate of DC films are now orphans in a moribund cinematic universe, but the studio still needs audiences to see them on a blockbuster scale.
“It’s a perhaps unavoidable but terrible case of timing,” says a source at a rival studio. “Audiences don’t feel like they have to invest two hours of their life because it’s not going to matter going forward.”
Indeed, things have not been going well. The production budgets and likely marketing spends for these four films will cost between $1.1 billion and $1.2 billion in total, according to experts outside the studio. But “Shazam! 2” has already bombed, earning a feeble $133 million globally. And “The Flash” just opened to a mere $55 million in the U.S. and Canada, grossing $135.7 million worldwide as of June 19 —well under expectations, and nowhere near what a film of this caliber and cost needs to approach breaking even.
“The movie should be opening at $120 million domestic,” says an industry veteran who’s worked on many major campaigns. “This is an unmitigated disaster.” (A spokesperson for Warner Bros. declined to comment.)
The “Flash” rollout also faced unprecedented difficulties caused by its star. Save for an appearance at a photos-only premiere event this month, Miller has been totally out of the public eye since August, when they apologized to “everyone that I have alarmed and upset with my past behavior”— including multiple allegations of misconduct, abuse and assault—citing “complex mental health issues” as the reason. Pulling a Christopher Plummer and replacing Miller was a financial nonstarter for Warners. The actor, who plays two versions of Barry, is in practically every scene of the film, and often the only person on-screen. (The studio did have fair warning; Miller was caught on video in April 2020 choking a woman in Iceland, months before “The Flash” went into production.)
To compensate for the absence of its problematic lead, Warners spent heavily on TV spots during the NBA Finals, and director Andy Muschietti did multiple interviews unreservedly praising Miller. In January, Gunn called the film “one of the best superhero movies I’ve ever seen”; Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav didn’t bother qualifying, hyping “The Flash” as “the best superhero movie” outright at CinemaCon in April.
“When they called it ‘the greatest superhero movie’ —if it’s not correct, you’re setting yourself up to fail,” says an executive at a different rival studio. “In this environment, it’s better to underpromise and overdeliver.”
Perhaps most ominous for Warners, however, is the possibility that audiences are becoming blasé about cinematic universes altogether. There have been at least 55 movies based on comic books in the past 10 years alone, most of them part of interconnected mega-franchises that depend on fans flocking to them no matter which superhero is in the title. Not only does “The Flash” reference events and characters in everything from “Justice League” to “Aquaman,” but it relies heavily on the climax of 2013’s “Man of Steel” for its own final act. Similarly, Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” drew from several past films and the “Loki” TV series; moviegoers shrugged.
“When you have a film set in a multiverse, it’s asking the audience to recall past films instead of shutting off their brain and enjoying what’s in front of them,” says Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock. He notes that “The Flash’s” domestic opening weekend is on par with debuts for other titles that have been part of the wider DC universe, like “Black Adam” ($67 million) and “Aquaman” ($68 million). Whereas “Joker” and “The Batman” — stand-alone films with zero connection to anything else — opened to $96 million and $134 million, respectively.
“Batman is so strong on its own, it doesn’t really need to be tied down with these other characters,” Bock says. But that is exactly what Gunn and Safran are planning; Muschietti is set to direct “Batman: The Brave and the Bold,” one of 10 interconnected film and TV DC titles planned through roughly 2027, including Gunn’s “Superman.”
Moving forward, Warners and DC must walk a painfully narrow path. Gunn said recently that the titular character of “Blue Beetle” is “the first DCU character,” which could save the film from feeling like a lame duck but also ties it to a cinematic universe that audiences have yet to embrace. Meanwhile, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” will conclude the old DC universe for good, but whether it can approach the $1.1 billion global take of 2018’s “Aquaman” without a cinematic future is unclear.
Ultimately, the most important factor remains quality. “There can be audience fatigue when it comes to the obligation of having to watch 20 movies to understand a new one,” says one exec. “But it doesn’t matter when the movie is good.”
Rebecca Rubin and Zack Sharf contributed to this story.
