During Ezra Miller’s multi-state crime spree last year, many industry people wondered why Warner Bros didn’t find a way to pull the plug on The Flash, a superhero franchise starring Miller. The Flash had already been filmed (for the most part) before Miller’s crime spree, which involved multiple claims of assault, accusations of kidnapping and grooming and a lot more. At the end of the day, Warner Bros chose to stand by Ezra, forcing them into treatment and then basically forcing Miller to go silent for the better part of eight months. Miller then made their triumphant “return” at the Flash’s LA premiere, and that was it as far as Miller’s promotion went. Miller did no interviews, no press junket, nothing. That was the studio’s official strategy: radio silence around their lead. It did not pay off?
“The Flash,” a superhero adventure starring Ezra Miller, emerged victorious over Pixar’s “Elemental” in a battle of box office lightweights. This weekend’s two new releases were once expected to ignite the summer blockbuster season; instead, both entirely missed the mark. “The Flash” stumbled with $55 million and “Elemental” collected just $29.5 million in their respective debuts. Both films fell short of already-low expectations. Worse, they were pricy endeavors, costing $200 million to make and roughly $100 million to market, so they are shaping up to be huge disappointments in their theatrical runs.
In the lead-up to “The Flash,” executives at Warner Bros. worked hard to convince the public that the film is “one of the greatest superhero movies ever made,” per newly minted DC Studios co-chief James Gunn. Directed by Andy Muschietti, the story picks up as Miller’s Barry Allen a.k.a The Flash travels back in time to prevent his mother’s murder and inadvertently cracks open the DC multiverse. (Cameos abound!)
But a tepid “B” CinemaScore from opening weekend crowds suggests that the moviegoing masses didn’t entirely agree with the lavish praise bestowed on the film by the people who made it. Without positive audience scores or strong word-of-mouth, “The Flash” will struggle to rebound in the coming weeks, especially as summer season heats up with the release of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” on June 30, “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” on July 12 and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” on July 21.
“This is a weak three-day opening for a superhero [film],” says David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “There have been similar openings that grew into big numbers,” he adds, referring to 2015’s “Ant-Man,” which opened to $57 million and ended with $519 million worldwide, as well as 2018’s “Aquaman,” which debuted to $67.4 million and finished at $1.15 billion globally. “But we do not see that here.”
“The Flash” also stumbled at the international box office with $75 million from 78 markets, bringing its global tally to $139 million. Unless its box office fortunes rebound, “The Flash” looks to fall more closely in line with Dwayne Johnson’s $200 million-budgeted “Black Adam,” which opened last year to $67 million and failed to reach $400 million globally, ultimately losing money in its theatrical run.
Variety goes on to blame the unconventional promotional strategy of having a lead actor immersed in so much legal, criminal and moral drama and not making that actor do any kind of media. The other way of looking at it is that even with an extremely problematic actor in the lead role and even with no promotional interviews to support the film, Warner Bros managed to squeeze out a $130 million opening in domestic and international markets. But yeah, those numbers are going to drop off a cliff in coming weeks as the summer movie season picks up. Anyway, I am curious why so many DC-fans stayed home. Was it specifically about Ezra Miller, or was it superhero fatigue? Or was it something else? Like, The Flash didn’t even look good? It felt like the critical acclaim was bought and paid for.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red.
I am honestly shocked they released the movie.
Good. I hope it keeps tanking.
All of the above? DC movies are generally terrible dark downers, apparently there’s no future or sequel to this due to DC changes, and oh yeah, do you want to support an abusive criminal creep? Ughhhhhhhhhhh. I’m so happy this movie is a fail so that “keep the abuser” didn’t become a winning strategy.
Good point! I suppose ultimately the reason behind the failure isn’t important, as long as “keep the abuser” didn’t work out well for them. It’s reason enough for another studio not to follow the same playbook.
Have nothing against Comic Book movies… they are massive, not going anywhere and have their fans/market… but I am personally so very sick and tired of them.
All formulaic, tediously repetitive and really, would rather watch anything else. Game? Yes, Baking show? Please. Paint Dry? Fine. Anything other than yet another dark, gritty tortured superhero seeking redemption in an injection molded plastic costume with a predictable sarcastic wisecrack.
This sounds like (yet another) case of superhero fatigue. Fans are getting selective–it’s not enough to trumpet a movie just because it “changes the DCU/MCU forever” or will be the “ultimate” superhero flick. This would have had to rack up Black Panther-type raves to get the box office needed.
God Ezra Miller looks so creepy.
I think DC fans are tired of being burned by DC’s shitty movies.
I think it’s a two pronged thing going on here. a)Ezra Miller’s gross and criminal behavior is a major issue and the studio’s decision to try to pretend that it wasn’t extremely problematic is catching up to them.
b) If you’ve seen any of those Justice League movies, the Flash is the most ANNOYING character. Whining all the time and afraid of every thing. I don’t think anyone was holding their breath for that character to get its own movie.
James Gunn signed onto a sinking ship. Warner Brothers has made a TON of horrible decisions in recent years. James Gunn being one of them. Releasing The Idol, cancelling Perry Mason, canning an already completed $100 million project – Batgirl, MAX – the clusterf*ck rebranding/launch. The list goes on. They’re going to have to do a lot to overcome this. It’s been failure after failure for them.
As for Ezra Miller, I hope he’s cancelled for good now and goes to prison.
An absolute disaster. If I were advising WB, I’d tell them to just do the opposite of whatever David Zaslav wants.
I could absolutely see James Gunn getting saddled with the blame for terrible business decisions that he had nothing to do with. Still, promoting this as “one of the greatest superhero movies ever made” when there were so many obvious problems seems like an unforced error on his part.
Warners has always had a “way too many cooks” problem in the movie department. And not enough of those folks know how to let a filmmaker who knows what they are doing work without giving that person a ton of notes/interference. Ah, well, maybe Barbie will start turning things around this summer…
People are also super pissed about Henry Cavill.
Oh no! They canceled Perry Mason?!?! That’s a shame.
I only wanted to see this because Michael Keaton pays his Batman. I’ll wait for it to be on Max
Oh I forgot about that already. Damn it, I might watch it. Definitely not in the theater.
Why? I’ll tell ya why. Ezra is a criminal. No one is spending $ to support a criminal.
Garbage in human form.
HW needs to wake the hell up!
Your customers, the movie theater going public, are Not Going To Support criminals.
This movie should have been shelved for eternity.
Ezra and Armie Hammer can both fall off the face of planet Earth.
There is no amount of PR or second chances that will get me to buy a ticket.
Shia, Armie, Ezra all can starve.
I don’t see Michael Keaton in this photo. Good for him staying away.
So has all the criminal stuff been made to go away, or are there more charges to come? It seems Ezra has managed to get away with a lot here.
I also wonder whether the reason Ezra was not allowed to do media on this thing was because Warner Bros didn’t trust them to stay on message. I can definitely see that.
I’d bet they didn’t trust interviewers not to ask them questions about their “legal issues.”
WB thought people would excuse Ezra’s bad behavior and separate the person from the character. They were wrong. Also, the Flash was on TV for years. It just ended weeks ago. No scandals. The plot point for the movie was played out on the small screen over the course of 3 years (I think. Stopped watching long ago).
I find Ezra Miller beyond problematic and don’t want to support their poor decisions and bad choices.
My 24 y/o son was appalled 1) it was released on the anniversary of George Reeves suicide, June 16th 2) digital appearance of both Reeves and Adam West which both weren’t given accolades (notably West) in real life. May be bad karma 😞
Our home is full of nerds, and my daughter is a huge DC fan, but even she thinks The Flash is kind of boring, but she’d go if she was curious about the story. I will just watch Batman with Micheal Keaton over again, or even Birdman again, instead of this. And no one in this house is giving money to Ezra Miller or any project they are involved with. For us, it’s a no-go on all fronts.
I didn’t know much about Ezra Miller so I googled and found a Rolling Stone timeline for his last few years – yikes! How is he not behind bars? The article is not paywalled.
They expected the world to be fickle about Miller and their crimes against people.
They failed Sasha on the promotion front as well. She should have been front and center for the promotion. Even if no one was interested in Barry, they would have been Supergirl.
And yes, they totally paid for those early rave reviews. Totally did.
They should have recast the role. Miller wasn’t famous enough to have a cult following ready to forgive criminal behaviour.
Honestly they should have cast Grant from the TV series to begin with, but absolutely yes, they should have recast Ezra after. Ezra’s rap sheet is long and messy.
I remember when We Need to Talk about Kevin came out and Ezra’s performance was highly acclaimed.
They immediately alienated all the supportive press and media on the red carpets by being rude, condescending and intentionally contentious to everyone including their fans. They are very pretentious about art and artistry. Based on their interviews over the years they have a sneering attitude toward the “unwashed masses” who pay to see what others create.
Elaine Lui at Lainey gossip wrote about trying to interview them at the time of that film and how much of an obnoxious prick they were and how they were trying to pick fights and belittle the press.
So take a starting point of being a talented, attractive successful teen who’s already an arrogant combative jerk, and add a decade of growing money and increasingly high profile projects being thrown to them, with no accountability.
Or you know that he a child molester, rapist just to name two things of his criminal actions.
saw the preview for this during the spiderverse and it actually looked fine to the point where my bf wanted to see it and I said no bc of Ezra’s shenanigans but everything i’ve seen since looks like hot garbage.
Because DC movies suck.
There were four directors (before the one who got it across the finish line) who left this movie over creative differences.
So I suspect the movie was just a bit of a mess, and everyone involved has been doing their best to help it limp its way into partially paying back its investment.
The terrible press around Ezra Miller doesn’t help, but even without that, it seems like they were trying to polish a turd.
It’s not quite superhero fatigue because Spiderverse did well. Apparently the CGI is really bad and the plot was just average. Plus the Ezra factor
But Spiderverse movies are consistently innovative and good. They give fans their money’s worth.
I saw it for Michael Keaton (my favorite Batman like the 80’s child that I am) and I loved it.
There were so many enjoyable cameos and surprises that it had a nostalgia factor similar to the last Spider-Man flick.
And yes I enjoyed it so much that I went back and rewatched the other DC Comic flicks (Wonder Woman, Man of Steele, Batman vs Superman, and the Justice League} and I still loved those too.
I think the lack of press definitely hurt it, because when I was talking about it at work- everyone had forgotten it even came out last weekend lol
I saw it too and honestly thought it was excellent. I think peeps need to just stfu and watch the damn movie to form their own opinion. I would wqtch it again right now. I thought it was great.
I don’t think any of the movies released this past weekend did great. Not even the Pixar film.
There were frequent comments from people on Twitter this past weekend about how they hadn’t seen ANY promotions for any of these films, especially Elemental. And then there’s streaming and the cost of going to the movies. If they truly wanted people to go to the movies, they’d lower the prices.
Not only did they release this movie, this guy is apparently going to star in the second one too. The f-ck?
I went with a bunch of people last weekend in 4DX and we all thought it was incredible. Miller is great in it. It’s my second favorite DC movie after Wonder Woman. I hope he gets help. My sister has pretty severe schizoeffective disorder and has acquired quite a criminal record, including contributing to the delinquency of a minor (probably not at all what one thinks it is). When she’s not sick, she’s a kind, creative, funny, smart person. When she is sick, it’s awful. Diseases that manifest in behavior like this don’t usually draw sympathy, but I have sympathy for him.
Don’t care for DC movies and unwilling in the extreme to support a single solitary thing Ezra Miller ever does.
I wonder how many of these genius commenters have actually seen The Flash to have, yknow… An INFORMED opinion?! *GASP!!