The box office disaster that is The Flash is one that has rocked the industry and box office analysts across the world. What has once considered a new franchise, fell flat on its face and had its legs cut off. The Flash will go down in box office history as one of the biggest bombs of all time, right up there with Heavens Gate, John Carter, and Shazam: Fury of the Gods.
The question is why did The Flash fail? It featured the return of not only Ben Affleck as Batman, but also Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, and Micheal Keaton as Batman from the 1989 film Batman.
Everyone expected the film to be a major hit, with many predicting a worldwide total of around $700m and around $300m domestic. However disaster struck when The Flash opened to $55m and its legs collapsed, as of this article, The Flash will end its domestic run at just over $100m and less than $250m worldwide.
So what made The Flash flop? There was a perfect storm of reasons that we will explore that all worked together to doom this project, so sit back and kick up your feet, here are 5 Reasons The Flash Flopped At The Box Office.
5 Reasons Why The Flash Flopped At The Box Office
5. Ezra Miller’s Criminal Actions and Alleged Misdeeds
The news was filled with the misdeeds and mental breakdown of The Flash star Ezra Miller (who goes by They/Them pronouns) over the course of a year Ezra Miller was arrested for a misdemeanor, allegedly assaulting several people, and was accused of grooming a minor. Now even though most of the allegations (including the grooming) were debunked and proven false, the endless media headlines about the troubled star, turned many people off and kept them from supporting the film.
4. Conservative Backlash
Ezra Miller is an outspoken member of the LGBT community, and the culture war between the Liberal and Conservative political factions has been heating up. Lately, Conservative politicians and leaders have been pushing boycotts of companies and products that promote LGBT content. This was most apparent with the successful boycotts of Target and Bud Light, which have seen the two companies lose tens of billions. With many business analysts saying Bud Light sales were “Desimated,” Journalists Grace Randolph said that many conservatives are not comfortable supporting someone like Ezra Miller, combined with his sexual identity and allegations, they are the perfect target of a boycott.
3. It’s the Economy Stupid
In the 90s political strategist James Carvill famously said “It’s the economy stupid” to describe the major issue of that election. In 2023, Americans are dealing with major inflation and rising costs of everything. People are tightening their belts, and with so many movies coming out in June, they had to pick and choose what to go to. With the average cost of taking a family of 4 to the movies being around $100 most families view going to the movies as a rare luxury, and because of this most choose to watch a film on streaming.
2. Fan Boycotts
Fans of DC have long been upset with Warner Bros for its endless mishandling of the DC brand. This has seen Warner Bros being at the crosspoint of boycotts from four different fandoms.
- Zack Snyder Fans: These fans are mad that they are not getting a conclusion to the universe that Snyder started, coined “The Snyderverse” These fans want to see Justice League Part 2 made. They are a large fandom that is very loyal to Zack Snyder, pushing his Netflix properties such as Army of the Dead to be one of Netflix’s biggest films of all time on the platform. Thus they are rejecting DC projects as the Warner Bros leadership has rejected them.
- James Gunn Fans: This is a smaller fandom but this is made up of James Gunn fans who hate The Snyderverse and are choosing to boycott the remaining DCEU films in favor of the upcoming Gunn-fronted DCU reboot.
- Batgirl Fans: Batgirl is a very popular character with a large fandom, and David Zaslav and Warner Bros angered not only Batgirl fans but Keaton and film fans when it canceled the already finished Batgirl movie and used it for a tax write-off and said the movie would never be seen.
- Henry Cavill Fans: Henry Cavill was already popular from his work as Superman in Man of Steel, Batman V Superman and Zack Snyder’s Justice League, but also shot to worldwide fame in the Netflix streaming show The Witcher and Mission Impossible Fallout. Fans loved Cavill as Superman, even if they were not fans of Snyder, when Warner Bros announced that Cavill would be returning as Clark Kent in Black Adam and in a in-development Man of Steel 2, fans were ecstatic. With the promise of a cheerier and more colorful Superman, then less then a month later, Cavill announced that James Gunn had fired him from the role and would recast.
Needless to say, this caused a firestorm of anger, not only at the carpet being pulled out from excited fans but that Warner Bros and James Gunn had humiliated Henry Cavill by telling him to announce his return only to have to take it back.
The combined power of these fandoms rejecting Warner Bros and DC, resulted in fewer fans seeing The Flash.
1. James Gunn’s DCU Reboot
Perhaps the biggest reason for the failure of The Flash, is the very poor business decision by James Gunn and David Zaslav to announce the DCEU reboot into the DCU back in January of 2023. This cut off all excitement within the hardcore fandom for the remaining 4 DCEU films releasing this year. We saw a similar thing happen with The New Mutants, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix when released after the Fox/Disney merger was announced. Both films’ legs were cut off as fans just simply ignored them due to them feeling meaningless in the face of a hard reboot.
James Gunn should have waited to announce the hard reboot till the end of 2023 after Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom was released. He could of still announced the Batman recasting with Brave and the Bold, and the rest of the DCU slate but kept the news of a reboot quiet fronted by Superman: Legacy.
With news of the reboot occurring fans simply did not care enough to go see a movie they felt did not matter anyway. Many trades reported afterward that this was a major reason for the film’s underperforming.
