Second-Flash Embarrassment: Over-Praised Blue Beetle Bombs on Its Opening Weekend
We bet there’s quite a grim mood at the DC headquarters currently as the studio’s new hyped-up superhero movie doubles the failure of its previous hyped-up superhero movie.
DC fans are split as some of them see James Gunn as the savior of the studio while others tend to think the director’s going to ruin everything. But since admittedly, there’s not much left to ruin at this point, it’s in everyone’s best interests that the former group turns out right: DC could really use a shakedown at the moment.
It’s not been long after the disastrous flop of The Flash now, was it? Even Gunn himself promised it was going to be “the best superhero movie of all time,” and the hype was so overblown it was almost expected that Ezra Miller ’s movie would earn $1B in its opening weekend. However, the hype was all fake: The Flash bombed.
It bombed so disastrously, in fact, that we still can’t help but meme about it. Now, however, we have a new competitor to fit in these shoes of the ridiculed.
Just like The Flash, Blue Beetle was promised to be a grand superhero movie, and its early reviews were nothing short of spectacular. But after the previous flop, the fans were not taking these promises for their face value, and they turned out correct: though less overhyped, Blue Beetle promised a lot, but delivered much less.
Blue Beetle had quite a rough start on its opening weekend: the movie only managed to earn $25.4M domestically. It’s twice as low as The Flash grossed back in the day (Miller’s flop earned $55.7M then), but there’s a crucial detail here, too: while The Flash had a budget of $300M, Blue Beetle was made for just $100M.
In terms of comparing the opening weekend revenue and the production budget, Blue Beetle definitely outperformed its notorious predecessor, but overall, it’s still quite a bomb at this point. Blue Beetle fell well within its recent projections, but if by some miracle, it doesn’t begin attracting more people on the following weekends…
Then, DC will have a second huge flop on their hands, and that will be straight-up embarrassing — and far from the perfect start for Gunn and Safran as the new co-heads of DC.
Source: Box Office Mojo