It was billed (admittedly by the studio itself) as “probably one of the greatest superhero movies ever made”, the film to reset the multiverse just in time for James Gunn’s much-garlanded arrival as new DC head honcho. But while the box office greenbacks collected by any given movie are not always a valid mark of its long term place in the cinematic pantheon, The Flash’s $55m US opening last weekend has had industry types running in circles trying to find the door marked “box office bomb”.
The Hollywood Reporter said that the Andy Muschietti-directed superhero epic did even worse than 2009’s Watchmen, while Variety quoted an “industry insider” who described the film’s performance as an “unmitigated disaster” and pondered if the movie would even break even. Perhaps, its report suggested, audiences might even be growing tired of comic book movies altogether, given there have been 55 released in multiplexes over the past decade.
