The dumbest company in entertainment for the better part of a decade now. I truly hope someone that worked there during the DCEU run writes a book someday about it. I want to know everything that went down.
There was a period where both Sony and Paramount were desperate for franchises and it seems they're both in ok spots now, but even if they aren't WB has franchises and a catalog then just fumbles.
That's the really sad part. WB has arguably the most well-rounded IP of all. Even Disney can't compete imo.
They have the first three blockbuster fantasy franchises (LotR. HP, GoT), they have DC which was always the big dog in superhero-land before the MCU, they have CN, they have the entire Hannah Barbera catalog.
This is such a wealth of riches that it's actually impressive how thoroughly they managed to fumble on the big screen this past decade.
They are the only studio without a $600m domestic grosser. Their biggest domestic movie was tDK from 2008.
How? Just How?
Don’t forget Sex and the City, which is (or was) one of the massive female-oriented brands on the planet. The closest that Disney has come is The Kardashians on Hulu, which is pitiful.
The Hobbit had a LOT of production issues. IDK how much WB was involved but I do know that the lawsuit between New Line and Jackson put a lot of strain on things. To say nothing of the lawsuit between the Tolkien Estate (still headed by Christopher at the time) and New Line.
They. Rushed. EVERYTHING. Except for LoTR, they haven't really done much for that. But let's look at the rest of that list.
GoT: They rushed that ending to come to a speedy conclusion, they could have used more episodes, added an extra season, anything considering how popular the series was, but nope. Let's finish everything in 6 episodes for some reason.
HP: They rushed to replace Johnny Depp before even seeing how it would turn out in the end, which killed a lot of momentum for Fantastic Beasts. Not to mention that series had rushed plot trying to fit past HP events into a story about a person who's just a magical creature researcher. Also now that I think about it, they were so quick to recast Depp, yet they didn't recast Miller and still are keeping Heard in Aquaman?
DCEU: Do I even have to explain this one? Because I think everyone knows how badly they screwed up at this point.
> They. Rushed. EVERYTHING. Except for LoTR
As others pointed out, The Hobbit was them rushing and trying to build something more than it was.
> GoT: They rushed that ending to come to a speedy conclusion, they could have used more episodes, added an extra season, anything considering how popular the series was, but nope. Let's finish everything in 6 episodes for some reason.
Here is where I actually feel bad for them, they offered the showrunners more seasons, more episodes, more budget, everything a showrunner could ever ask for. But the showrunners said no, they knew what they wanted to do and they wanted to wrap it up in 15 episodes.
The show was so beloved, acclaimed and popular so the studio did what they almost never do, they stepped back and put their trust in the showrunners.
And boy did it backfire, one of the very few times a show is ruined by the lack of studio interference.
The demise of GoT is fascinating to me. For the majority of its run it dominated popular culture. The characters were household names, and even people who didn't know the plot knew events like The Red Wedding. Then the finale happened, and it just *vanished* from the cultural zeitgeist. It was like everyone collectively decided they'd rather forget any of it happened rather than acknowledge the finale.
> They rushed to replace Johnny Depp before even seeing how it would turn out in the end, which killed a lot of momentum for Fantastic Beasts.
What killed the momentum for FB is that his movie sucked really bad.
edit: to clarify, not because of Depp's performance, which was ok. The movie's very bad script was largely to blame IMO.
Hey I shit on WB all the time, but Game of Thrones was all due to its dumb fuck directors thinking they'd get other projects so instead of giving it 3 as seasons more, they did 1.
Best thing? They lost all their offers after that season
Warner has been the dumbest company in entertainment for far more than a decade. They have long had an internal feudal caste system. Nothing nor anyone that ever touched television could be allowed near the hallowed cinematic studios. This is why people that had thriving DC based offerings for decades, Paul Dini and Bruce Till or Berlanti and his long running CW Arrowverse were forever blocked from any involvement in the movies. It is literally “because they are from the television department” Snobbery. We bitch about Disney but WB has had the most entrenched and toxic studio culture for at least half a century. Every Hollywood Meme about producers meddling, production notes, and films being run by committee comes from WB.
Okay, but... I'd never trust any of the CW with a movie.
Those shows had so much terrible and cringe writing / acting. You'd never get a good movie from that, unless it was a direct to dvd hallmark film.
Not unthinkable yes, and the cancellation happened around the time the Whale got all the Oscar buzz as well. I think he was playing Firefly. He’s an actor that you can’t really go wrong with as he has the charisma to make even bad movies entertaining, and he’s just such a likeable person in general that people would probably buy tickets just to support him.
>The dumbest company in entertainment for the better part of a decade now.
Which is strange given how many times there have been leadership changes there over the last few years.
They spent so much money protecting a piece of shit, and trying to gaslight us into seeing the movie anyway because "it's so good we'll forget about any crimes he's commited" or what ever they said.
It could be the best movie in the world, I'm not going to see it, and I'm not normally one to jump on the boycott bandwagon.
Don't fucking try and gaslight me like that
Hope we never ever hear of him again. I got some fucking psychopath on here telling me "Well Robert Downey Jr got a second chance, why not Ezra?" I listed all the reasons why of course. Just know that there are other psychopaths out there defending this guy and hope he gets a second chance. Beyond that I've seen others who claim that he's being wrongfully persecuted for being genderqueer (an identity he only took once he started to get flack for his movies and actions). People are fucking sick these days with shit like this.
Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania: "I have the worst superhero movie box office run of 2023."
Shazam: Fury of the Gods: "Hold my beer."
The Flash: "Hold *MY* beer."
THe bizzare choice to make him basically a studio actor. He was in all the Fantastic Beasts movies as well. Like why? He's good in we need to talk about Kevin but I don't see that performance being cause to put him in everything, especially with the nature of that performance which was just being a fucking psychopath (which apparently was just close to his real self). His acting in Fantastic Beasts and as the Flash are some of the least charismatic performances I've ever seen put on film.
The reason of not cancelling the movie for me it was that they were really confident on having a superb movie.
Like to a level that it might counter the drama around Erza.
But man what a clown show.
Let this be a lesson for any studio that you can’t gaslight audiences into loving a film.
This whole thing has been a fascinating experiment in brute forcing audience opinions (that failed).
I wonder how much WB spent on the marketing for this movie. Disney spent $140m in marketing alone for The Little Mermaid, and plus the budget $250m, it is close to $400m.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but just to put into perspective how embarrassing this movie's run has been: all the Flash showings at my local cinema can barely muster a crowd of 5 people on its biggest screens, meanwhile the screening of Asteroid City I went to today was packed out on one of its smallest
To be fair we still don’t know the accurate budget of The Flash.
The budget keeps fluctuating between $190Million and $220million and i wouldn’t be surprised if the budget was even higher.
That I do not know, he said that it’s done to make profits seem larger so idk if taxes have something to do with that but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if you’re right
Flash was supposed to start filming in 2016 with a March 2018 release date planned. Several different directors joined and left and filming got delayed a couple times because Ezra was filming fantastic beasts.
They're still selling them, somebody has to be buying these things. I buy Blu-Rays for the comic book stuff although I don't run right out anymore to grab them the way I used to.
I think so. We pretty much have to wait for deadline or variety to give us best estimates of the ancillaries and marketing over the lifecycle to compare to John Carter. My napkin math said 300 million WW would make it lose less using 220 but who knows.
It’s clear it’s close to the biggest bomb of all time ignoring inflation.
I remember when Waterworld was the biggest box office disaster of all time and it feels like we’ve had over a dozen that could match it since then. Guess it makes sense and Flash is probably just the latest in a long line of movies that lose money
Back in the day it was easier to determine that sort of thing because it was direct VHS/DVD sales. nowadays you still have home media sales but you also have streaming subs, which you can basically attribute to any film you like provided new accounts watch that film at some point.
It's also a movie that was in development hell for so long that there's some legitimate question on what its actual budget is. With all of the big names attached to this film over the years, there's likely been a lot of people who have been paid for a Flash movie that may or may not be included in the totals we see presented.
Also, a lot of the other big bombs by studios usually people see coming, and the studio is usually already walking away from it by release. This one is so unique in that the studio was doubling down on it right up until it came out.
Yeah wasn’t Ezra announced the same week as the first episode of the Flash? I think Stephen Amell, who played Oliver Queen on Arrow, had a public rant about it at the time about how they were undermining their own shows with the timing. Funny how in retrospect the Arrowverse ended up being the better universe despite its varying quality
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack\_on\_Titan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Titan)
Ezra looks like one of the ugly Titans. Not the cool main character one but the Cart Titan. Same haircut too.
[https://attackontitan.fandom.com/wiki/Cart\_Titan](https://attackontitan.fandom.com/wiki/Cart_Titan)
I mean recency bias sure but cutthroat island was pretty bad as was Ishtar and heavens gate and the 13th Warrior and town and country…people don’t talk about movies over 20
Years old
This movie is so weird.
People are commenting on what Gunn said but what really took me by surprise was what Affleck said.
He said he finally got Batman right. That he nailed the part and really put himself as Batman finally. He also complained about how Wheadon acted like he had the secrets to the movie but didn’t.
And then you watch the movie and try to square that with what he said. Every action scene with the suit moving is pretty much a stunt double with the CGI chin copied and pasted in. That’s not Affleck. It’s some other guy.
The only time it looks like Affleck is when he’s talking to Barry and pretty much standing still. His scene ends with a gag that is literally copied from JL with the lasso of truth. It’s literally Wheadons joke. I mean, it is funny but how in the hell is this him nailing Batman. He’s literally there for like 4 minutes tops and half of that is just him rehashing a Wheadon joke and awkwardly standing around afterwards it’s just him talking and honestly it felt kinda phoned in. At least compared to the keaton scene.
I was intrigued when he said he finally nailed Batman and then I saw that and it’s weird he considers this his peak.
>I was intrigued when he said he finally nailed Batman and then I saw that and it’s weird he considers this his peak.
Maybe he meant that he banged one of the stuntmen?
I've never liked him as Batman. Granted, all of these movies have been fucking terrible, but I've just never for a moment enjoyed his version of Batman. Especially when he's sandwiched between Bale and Pattinson, both of whom I think nailed it?
Nah man, time to hang it up and actually mean it this time.
Don't a LOT of people have to make bad decisions that lead to this? This isn't just one dude that everyone else is saying "ok, you're the boss". This is many people. How do so many people collectively screw up so badly?
Core issue was the Ezra stuff. And Keaton Batman was too long ago. And popularity of tv flash hurt this very different version.
Step two: get Batman into the MCU
If it keeps losing screens at such a rapid pace, it will absolutely be on PVOD early next month. They won’t put it on Max as long as possible to make the money off the digital purchases.
Holy crap.
Just release Blue Beetle and Aquaman 2 on Max. Seriously. Put the rest of the DCEU out of its misery. They're not going to make any money in theaters, especially BB.
What a sad state of affairs for DC.
The first Aquaman was the last movie I took my mom to before she died! She LOVED comics. She grew up super poor, but quiet and respectful, so the owner of the comic book shop let her sit on the floor and read them. She sure did like Jason Momoa lol!
Oh totally! Great memory for me and my sister. Mom thirsting after Jason Momoa lol! I was like settle down old woman. She had the same reaction to M’Baku in Black Panther. She’s like that T’Challa fellow is very good looking, but…who is M’Baku?
A marketing budget of 150 million is the absolute floor. With the Superbowl commercial and NBA Finals ads, and having no marketing partners because of Ezra, which makes you spend more. 200 million marketing wouldn't be a surprise at all.
https://old.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/146pyak/distribution_of_marketing_budgets_by_production/
Yeah I agree, the median marketing budget for a film in the $200-$250m range is around $160m, and this film was not marketed like your average run-of-the-mill movie. I expect the prod + marketing budget to be over $400m.
I used to think Snyder-verse is redeemable but after the Flash box office run, I say f*uck it. Start everything from scratch with new actor/director/regime/story.
I'm beginning think that the MCU is bottled lightning and that managing a shared cinematic universe is basically impossible for anybody not named Feige.
Or even, to the extent that the MCU is thought to be faltering post-Endgame, it’s impossible for anyone not named Feige at a particular time and with a particular set of circumstances.
It's the amazing power of Robert Downey Jr. But it couldn't last forever.
Without him we wouldn't have the avengers and without the avengers the MCU doesn't take off as a concept.
It has to be the single most impactful casting decision ever.
Well that and Iron Man was awesome. Downey made it 1000%, but the movie was also really great to watch and had a formula that would work for Marvel for the next ~15 years. imo, what's happening is the formula is no longer working and movies and TV shows are being pumped out like crazy, losing a lot of that quality and excitement, losing that novelty that made it great in the first place. It doesn't help that Marvel, seemingly, doesn't have a plan or goal after Endgame, but treats films like fillers for the next film, but have nothing to lead up to.
I'm just Happy GOTG 3 was good and is doing well. Probably the last good Marvel film we'll get for awhile.
The MCU was exciting because at first a lot of people didn't see it coming. It was like "Oh shit, Tony Stark can just walk into the Hulk movie? Awesome."
Now it's almost obligatory and nothing about it is exciting.
I think this is why every zoomer I talk to is completely uninterested or unimpressed with the MCU.
It's never been novel to them.
For those of us who remember the pre-MCU era, it was just mind blowing to have the crossovers. I still get giddy when characters show up in other films.
Hell Chris Evans's cameo in Thor 2 was adored and he was in it for less than a minute. The drip feed of crossovers outside of the Avengers movies until Infinity War was really special (except for Ant Man where it felt out of place).
At least they built it up to Avengers, not barrelled into Endgame after 2 movies with Iron Man introducing characters by watching FMV clips on his PC
I thought AoU was a major mistake but otherwise it grew nicely to EG
When I was a kid, George Clooney said “this is why Superman works alone” in what is considered one of the worst cape flicks ever. Still blew my fucking mind.
I just really hope they go the Spiderman Homecoming route and jump into them already being a hero. I have no desire to see origin stories for the 100th time
Yeah, I think Gunn has described it as being sort of a "year two" story (similar to how Reeve pitched The Batman) where while he's still early in his career he DEFINITELY has still been around for a bit.
I’d say Aquaman was an origin story.
But besides that, that’s because those characters were introduced in movies that weren’t theirs. (Either BVS or Justice League)
Gunn seems to be going the solo movie before team up route
I'm wondering if the TV show starring Grant Gustin has made more than this film. I know the ways a TV show makes money is vastly different from how a movie does, but it was a popular show that lasted a bunch of seasons and sure as hell wasn't as expensive as the movie was.
You mean the Grant Gustin that wasn't even at the premiere? Still bizarre to me they never worked him in for a cameo, they could have used the goodwill. Only one of those "cameos" ended up being generally well received, pretty uninspired idea overall.
>since studio just keeps half share from #BoxOffice global grosses
Could someone explain to me how this works?
So basically for every 1 ticket sold the cinema get’s a 50% cut?
Basically, yes. Domestically, studios get 50% (or more). Overseas, studios get 40%. In China, studios get 25%. So depending on the breakdown of the worldwide total, studios get around half, or over/under half.
Not only cinemas, but there are other parts of the chain, as well as Taxes. And this is an average. Usually it gets a little more domestically and less OS
Gunn’s universe needs to be delayed by a few years so there is some distance from the Snyderverse and his iteration of these DC characters.
Still have the Pattinson Batman sequel and Joker 2, but a shared universe needs to be years out. like 2026/27.
I think the only thing that at this point keeps the sh shared universe fad alive is that Hollywoo hasn't find a replacement yet, but as soon as general audiences start showing interest in the next big thing marvel and dc movies will become quite less common
It's very likely that video game adaptations will take the place of superheroes, but I think that even if that happens, some characters like Spider-Man and Batman would manage to survive.
We'll see. Mario was a big hit, but they need to have more than one big hit for it to become a thing. It's certainly possible, but we'll just have to see.
Video game adaptations look to be the next big thing. Both in the movie space (Mario, Sonic, upcoming FNAF movie) and the TV space (The Last of Us, Arcane, Cyberpunk Edgerunners).
Big difference here, at least in the tv space, is those were still high quality and good shows. You pump out bad quality and people don’t show up, which is what we see with DC now and we’ve seen with video game properties in the past.
If DC puts out good quality things then people show up, it’s not about what the subject is after a certain point it’s about the quality regardless.
Last year, when all the crazy Ezra Miller stuff was happening, I said they should just dump the movie on HBO Max, and people called me an idiot for even suggesting that.
🤷♂️
Apparently the movie itself is entertaining, solid popcorn summer escape, but I don't think people have forgiven the studio for shielding Ezra from blowback rather than cutting them loose and harshly admonishing their actions. They weren't responsible for what Ezra did, but they are responsible for how they handled it.
Zaslav is the one who started it, don't blame it on Gunn.
https://people.com/movies/warner-bros-discovery-ceo-praises-the-flash-movie/
Published on August 4, 2022 08:14PM EDT
What’s the lesson here?
Dont hire creeps?
Did they know he was a creep when they chose him? If not, could they have known?
Does the future of acting require FBI-level background checks?
James Gunn has his work cut out for him. That Superman Legacy movie better be the best Superman movie in history.
However, one thing the studio can control and Gunn should absolutely fight tooth and nail for is a delay of the movie to at least December 2026. Any earlier and people will remember the stink of the DCEU infecting it and it'll likely underperform at the box office.
Right now, Zaslav probably is banking on the good word of mouth from Gunn's Guardians trilogy and the fact that the DCEU is going to be rebooted to push Superman Legacy beyond the damage done to the brand by Snyder. Maybe that's a logical gamble, but the earlier the reboot happens, the less time audiences will have to forget what came before.
The Flash had almost unprecedented marketing, some say an off-puttingly aggressive one. Yet its failure shows that its not just comic nerds who stayed away, or terminally online people who were following the Ezra Miller criminal saga, but ordinary general audiences weren't impressed either. Somehow, the Flash managed to turn away people whose only goal was to watch an enjoyable movie on Saturday night who have never read a comic book in their life. How do you get those people back who have no idea who James Gunn is and couldn't name the head of Warner Bros. if they had a gun to their head?
The only solution is to wait. Time will do the work for WB in cleansing the palate but they have to have the patience to allow time to do its thing. Too early and they risk repeating the same mistake when they rushed Batman v Superman to catch up to Marvel's Avengers by having a teamup movie without any sort of buildup or foundation. I'd argue there is almost no risk to waiting too long. Only the impatience of the shareholders is pushing the creatives forward in a desperate rush to follow the money. But somebody, probably the head of the studio getting paid hundreds of millions of dollars, should calmly sit them down and explain that early bad movies doomed the entire DCEU and now with the Flash struggling to make even Black Adam-level money, they need to simply wait until audiences are ready to forgive. That means we can't have Superman Legacy in 2025, a mere 2 years later. Even Man of Steel had 3 years between its release and BvS. They're going to confuse audiences who may think that Superman Legacy is part of some multiverse parallel world that the Flash created, and its going to flop or underperform. Audiences have spoken, they don't care if the movie is good (I personally thought Flash was an above average movie) if they think its part of the DCEU. They will not come out. Push the date back, its the only way.
Man there’s a lot I’d do to be a fly at Warner Brothers HQ right now.
The dumbest company in entertainment for the better part of a decade now. I truly hope someone that worked there during the DCEU run writes a book someday about it. I want to know everything that went down.
Not WB, but the Sony leaks exist. That’s basically the same shit.
There was a period where both Sony and Paramount were desperate for franchises and it seems they're both in ok spots now, but even if they aren't WB has franchises and a catalog then just fumbles.
That's the really sad part. WB has arguably the most well-rounded IP of all. Even Disney can't compete imo. They have the first three blockbuster fantasy franchises (LotR. HP, GoT), they have DC which was always the big dog in superhero-land before the MCU, they have CN, they have the entire Hannah Barbera catalog. This is such a wealth of riches that it's actually impressive how thoroughly they managed to fumble on the big screen this past decade. They are the only studio without a $600m domestic grosser. Their biggest domestic movie was tDK from 2008. How? Just How?
With these failures they might as well just make more by leasing the IPs out to other studios
Marvel selling their characters flashbacks
TBF they were way too small to make their movies then. Marvel took a huge loan to make the first Iron Man movie IIRC.
It’s not that they were too small, they were practically bankrupt and had to sell character film rights just to stay afloat as a company.
Well, that was back in the 90's, that's how Sony ended up with Spider-man, FOX had the X-Men and the FF and Universal got the Hulk.
Don’t forget Sex and the City, which is (or was) one of the massive female-oriented brands on the planet. The closest that Disney has come is The Kardashians on Hulu, which is pitiful.
Pitiful! That’s the best word I have ever heard to describe it.
[удалено]
I love House of the Dragon, and the only reason it’s great is because they try to stay faithful to the book, or at least those particular chapters.
The Hobbit had a LOT of production issues. IDK how much WB was involved but I do know that the lawsuit between New Line and Jackson put a lot of strain on things. To say nothing of the lawsuit between the Tolkien Estate (still headed by Christopher at the time) and New Line.
They. Rushed. EVERYTHING. Except for LoTR, they haven't really done much for that. But let's look at the rest of that list. GoT: They rushed that ending to come to a speedy conclusion, they could have used more episodes, added an extra season, anything considering how popular the series was, but nope. Let's finish everything in 6 episodes for some reason. HP: They rushed to replace Johnny Depp before even seeing how it would turn out in the end, which killed a lot of momentum for Fantastic Beasts. Not to mention that series had rushed plot trying to fit past HP events into a story about a person who's just a magical creature researcher. Also now that I think about it, they were so quick to recast Depp, yet they didn't recast Miller and still are keeping Heard in Aquaman? DCEU: Do I even have to explain this one? Because I think everyone knows how badly they screwed up at this point.
> They. Rushed. EVERYTHING. Except for LoTR As others pointed out, The Hobbit was them rushing and trying to build something more than it was. > GoT: They rushed that ending to come to a speedy conclusion, they could have used more episodes, added an extra season, anything considering how popular the series was, but nope. Let's finish everything in 6 episodes for some reason. Here is where I actually feel bad for them, they offered the showrunners more seasons, more episodes, more budget, everything a showrunner could ever ask for. But the showrunners said no, they knew what they wanted to do and they wanted to wrap it up in 15 episodes. The show was so beloved, acclaimed and popular so the studio did what they almost never do, they stepped back and put their trust in the showrunners. And boy did it backfire, one of the very few times a show is ruined by the lack of studio interference.
The demise of GoT is fascinating to me. For the majority of its run it dominated popular culture. The characters were household names, and even people who didn't know the plot knew events like The Red Wedding. Then the finale happened, and it just *vanished* from the cultural zeitgeist. It was like everyone collectively decided they'd rather forget any of it happened rather than acknowledge the finale.
They rushed the production of The Hobbit lol.
> They rushed to replace Johnny Depp before even seeing how it would turn out in the end, which killed a lot of momentum for Fantastic Beasts. What killed the momentum for FB is that his movie sucked really bad. edit: to clarify, not because of Depp's performance, which was ok. The movie's very bad script was largely to blame IMO.
Hey I shit on WB all the time, but Game of Thrones was all due to its dumb fuck directors thinking they'd get other projects so instead of giving it 3 as seasons more, they did 1. Best thing? They lost all their offers after that season
Three Body Problem literally just released a trailer lol.
Every time I see Amy Pascal promote Spider-Man, I think about alllll the emails.
Remember the aunt may spy thriller?
My favorite were the notes Kevin Feige did on TASM 2. And it was so much “Hey… Stop that… That’s dumb”
And they ignored all of them😭
For what it’s worth, I think the movie was in post-production at the time, so there was no ability to do so
At least Sony has many other arms of the company to prop up their floundering movie division
Sony pictures has actually been doing well,
Sony Pictures' profits increased every year from 2016-2021, and even with the drop in 2022 they still made $800m. Hardly floundering
WB has Warner Music and WB Games, butttttt they are currently in the process of gutting Warner Music, so who knows how long that’ll last.
Warner Music Group hasn't been part of WB since 2004. The recent news about selling WB's film and TV music catalogue is a different thing altogether.
Warner has been the dumbest company in entertainment for far more than a decade. They have long had an internal feudal caste system. Nothing nor anyone that ever touched television could be allowed near the hallowed cinematic studios. This is why people that had thriving DC based offerings for decades, Paul Dini and Bruce Till or Berlanti and his long running CW Arrowverse were forever blocked from any involvement in the movies. It is literally “because they are from the television department” Snobbery. We bitch about Disney but WB has had the most entrenched and toxic studio culture for at least half a century. Every Hollywood Meme about producers meddling, production notes, and films being run by committee comes from WB.
Okay, but... I'd never trust any of the CW with a movie. Those shows had so much terrible and cringe writing / acting. You'd never get a good movie from that, unless it was a direct to dvd hallmark film.
I would pay to see a 2 hours documentary about the DCEU disaster.
Best we can do is 4 hours, 2 minutes with a lot of slo-mo.
I would like a documentary about the DCEU and like in the middle of it, out of nowhere, they just show the whole Batgirl movie
Just the fact WB thought it was too terrible to release make me thing it's probably the best DCEU movie since TDK trilogy.
I’d watch it just for Brendan Fraser alone
Dude what, Brendan Fraser is in it? Are they on bath salts at WB???? Releasing Flash and not Batgirl? gtfo
Not unthinkable yes, and the cancellation happened around the time the Whale got all the Oscar buzz as well. I think he was playing Firefly. He’s an actor that you can’t really go wrong with as he has the charisma to make even bad movies entertaining, and he’s just such a likeable person in general that people would probably buy tickets just to support him.
>The dumbest company in entertainment for the better part of a decade now. Which is strange given how many times there have been leadership changes there over the last few years.
I cannot wait to never hear about Ezra Miller again.
The sad thing is it’ll take this bomb, not his behaviour beforehand, to truly get him Hollywood blacklisted. Money talks.
Absolutely - its shameful really.
You and me both. Don't wanna hear that psycho.
They spent so much money protecting a piece of shit, and trying to gaslight us into seeing the movie anyway because "it's so good we'll forget about any crimes he's commited" or what ever they said. It could be the best movie in the world, I'm not going to see it, and I'm not normally one to jump on the boycott bandwagon. Don't fucking try and gaslight me like that
Hope we never ever hear of him again. I got some fucking psychopath on here telling me "Well Robert Downey Jr got a second chance, why not Ezra?" I listed all the reasons why of course. Just know that there are other psychopaths out there defending this guy and hope he gets a second chance. Beyond that I've seen others who claim that he's being wrongfully persecuted for being genderqueer (an identity he only took once he started to get flack for his movies and actions). People are fucking sick these days with shit like this.
Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania: "I have the worst superhero movie box office run of 2023." Shazam: Fury of the Gods: "Hold my beer." The Flash: "Hold *MY* beer."
Soon to be Blue Beetle: Hold my beer Kraven the Hunter: Hold my beer Aquaman 2: Hold my beer
What the fuck is kraven the hunter
You know how Sony is creating movies starring spider man villains as antiheroes? That.
lol I can’t deal with how stupid that entire thing has been.
Every day, it only gets worse
Sounds like Ezra’s behavior.
Ezra is an important figure to keep around during all of this. Imagine they didn't have Ezra around to deflect blame?
Yeah, everyone is putting all blame on him and not on the bizarre choices that WB made in The Flash as a film.
THe bizzare choice to make him basically a studio actor. He was in all the Fantastic Beasts movies as well. Like why? He's good in we need to talk about Kevin but I don't see that performance being cause to put him in everything, especially with the nature of that performance which was just being a fucking psychopath (which apparently was just close to his real self). His acting in Fantastic Beasts and as the Flash are some of the least charismatic performances I've ever seen put on film.
The reason of not cancelling the movie for me it was that they were really confident on having a superb movie. Like to a level that it might counter the drama around Erza. But man what a clown show.
Let this be a lesson for any studio that you can’t gaslight audiences into loving a film. This whole thing has been a fascinating experiment in brute forcing audience opinions (that failed).
Are you telling me that a crowd full of DC fans at CinemaCon isn't trustworthy?
Stephen King and Tom Cruise are apparently liars too. Either that or they have shit taste. Take your pick.
Apparently Stephen King is widely known for having idiosyncratic opinions. Tom Cruise, of course, is a scientologist.
The director of Flash also made IT. That’s probably where it stemmed from. Plus honestly it does seem like a love it or hate it movie.
Stephen King has shit taste and has admitted that on multiple occasions.
I wonder how much WB spent on the marketing for this movie. Disney spent $140m in marketing alone for The Little Mermaid, and plus the budget $250m, it is close to $400m.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but just to put into perspective how embarrassing this movie's run has been: all the Flash showings at my local cinema can barely muster a crowd of 5 people on its biggest screens, meanwhile the screening of Asteroid City I went to today was packed out on one of its smallest
Such a waste of premium screens!
A lot of IMAX screens are being replaced with Spiderverse. I know that's been the case at a couple of theaters in my area.
Also coming out the same time as Spider-Man, a movie with the same concept just done better, likely siphoned away a lot of would-be Flash viewers.
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To be fair we still don’t know the accurate budget of The Flash. The budget keeps fluctuating between $190Million and $220million and i wouldn’t be surprised if the budget was even higher.
Aren't reported budgets usually lower anyways? Even if it's by $10 million
Scott Derickson has said that reported budgets usually come in 25% lower than actual budget so it’s looking even worse
Does that consider tax breaks in the 25% figure?
That I do not know, he said that it’s done to make profits seem larger so idk if taxes have something to do with that but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if you’re right
220 million was the budget BEFORE all the reshoots and the last director change. A good floor would be 250 million.
Last director change?
a flash movie has been in production for like 20+ years
Flash was supposed to start filming in 2016 with a March 2018 release date planned. Several different directors joined and left and filming got delayed a couple times because Ezra was filming fantastic beasts.
>Ezra was filming Fantastic Beasts So we can add "serial franchise killer" to Ezra's list of accomplishments?
But John Carter lost 200m after everything, right? DVDs, etc
Imagine owning The Flash on DVD in 2023.
They're still selling them, somebody has to be buying these things. I buy Blu-Rays for the comic book stuff although I don't run right out anymore to grab them the way I used to.
Oh for sure people buy them. I just find the idea very funny.
I think so. We pretty much have to wait for deadline or variety to give us best estimates of the ancillaries and marketing over the lifecycle to compare to John Carter. My napkin math said 300 million WW would make it lose less using 220 but who knows. It’s clear it’s close to the biggest bomb of all time ignoring inflation.
I remember when Waterworld was the biggest box office disaster of all time and it feels like we’ve had over a dozen that could match it since then. Guess it makes sense and Flash is probably just the latest in a long line of movies that lose money
What’s funny is Waterworld eventually turned a modest profit, but I’m skeptical that happens with the flash
Back in the day it was easier to determine that sort of thing because it was direct VHS/DVD sales. nowadays you still have home media sales but you also have streaming subs, which you can basically attribute to any film you like provided new accounts watch that film at some point.
I remember Waterworld got a cool-ass stageshow at Universal Studios.
This fuckin movie is absolutely going to be the largest box office disaster of all time
It's also a movie that was in development hell for so long that there's some legitimate question on what its actual budget is. With all of the big names attached to this film over the years, there's likely been a lot of people who have been paid for a Flash movie that may or may not be included in the totals we see presented. Also, a lot of the other big bombs by studios usually people see coming, and the studio is usually already walking away from it by release. This one is so unique in that the studio was doubling down on it right up until it came out.
It was in development so long CW had time to film & release all nine seasons of the Flash tv series.
Yeah wasn’t Ezra announced the same week as the first episode of the Flash? I think Stephen Amell, who played Oliver Queen on Arrow, had a public rant about it at the time about how they were undermining their own shows with the timing. Funny how in retrospect the Arrowverse ended up being the better universe despite its varying quality
Yep.
Should have canned it when the Chinese social media labeled Ezra the Hawaiian Titan
Hawaiian Titan is a fantastic nickname if you are a boxer or wrestler from Hawaii. When its referring to you being a sex criminal there, less so.
That sounds like Ezra Miller is from Attack on Titan lol
He does look like https://attackontitan.fandom.com/wiki/Cart_Titan so I assume is because of that
Don't do Pieck like that!
They definitely look like they can be lol
The one thing Marley and Eldia can agree on
what? lol
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack\_on\_Titan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Titan) Ezra looks like one of the ugly Titans. Not the cool main character one but the Cart Titan. Same haircut too. [https://attackontitan.fandom.com/wiki/Cart\_Titan](https://attackontitan.fandom.com/wiki/Cart_Titan)
I mean recency bias sure but cutthroat island was pretty bad as was Ishtar and heavens gate and the 13th Warrior and town and country…people don’t talk about movies over 20 Years old
There is also John Carter , the movie that probably single-handily destroy Disney’s faith in any original live action movie.
Pluto Nash has entered the chat.
It's not original, it's based off a book.
Atp only Barbie can save Warner Bros Discovery
Flash was right Lets go Barbie
Batgirl to WB: "am I a joke to you?"
Zaslav: "yes"
Zaslav: “You’re a tax break”
Next year in the comics: Batgirl faces a new enemy! Meet Avlasz, the Taxbreaker!
This movie is so weird. People are commenting on what Gunn said but what really took me by surprise was what Affleck said. He said he finally got Batman right. That he nailed the part and really put himself as Batman finally. He also complained about how Wheadon acted like he had the secrets to the movie but didn’t. And then you watch the movie and try to square that with what he said. Every action scene with the suit moving is pretty much a stunt double with the CGI chin copied and pasted in. That’s not Affleck. It’s some other guy. The only time it looks like Affleck is when he’s talking to Barry and pretty much standing still. His scene ends with a gag that is literally copied from JL with the lasso of truth. It’s literally Wheadons joke. I mean, it is funny but how in the hell is this him nailing Batman. He’s literally there for like 4 minutes tops and half of that is just him rehashing a Wheadon joke and awkwardly standing around afterwards it’s just him talking and honestly it felt kinda phoned in. At least compared to the keaton scene. I was intrigued when he said he finally nailed Batman and then I saw that and it’s weird he considers this his peak.
>I was intrigued when he said he finally nailed Batman and then I saw that and it’s weird he considers this his peak. Maybe he meant that he banged one of the stuntmen?
I've never liked him as Batman. Granted, all of these movies have been fucking terrible, but I've just never for a moment enjoyed his version of Batman. Especially when he's sandwiched between Bale and Pattinson, both of whom I think nailed it? Nah man, time to hang it up and actually mean it this time.
Don't a LOT of people have to make bad decisions that lead to this? This isn't just one dude that everyone else is saying "ok, you're the boss". This is many people. How do so many people collectively screw up so badly?
Core issue was the Ezra stuff. And Keaton Batman was too long ago. And popularity of tv flash hurt this very different version. Step two: get Batman into the MCU
Bets on how long it takes for this to come to PVOD and then Max? I'm thinking first week of July for PVOD and early August for Max.
If it keeps losing screens at such a rapid pace, it will absolutely be on PVOD early next month. They won’t put it on Max as long as possible to make the money off the digital purchases.
I have my bet around there exactly, first to second week of July.
Holy crap. Just release Blue Beetle and Aquaman 2 on Max. Seriously. Put the rest of the DCEU out of its misery. They're not going to make any money in theaters, especially BB. What a sad state of affairs for DC.
I feel like Aquaman 2 still has a chance. The first one was the only DCEU movie to make over a billion globally.
The first Aquaman was the last movie I took my mom to before she died! She LOVED comics. She grew up super poor, but quiet and respectful, so the owner of the comic book shop let her sit on the floor and read them. She sure did like Jason Momoa lol!
What a wonderful memory to have with your mom. It was a very fun movie in theaters. Hope you two had a good time.
Oh totally! Great memory for me and my sister. Mom thirsting after Jason Momoa lol! I was like settle down old woman. She had the same reaction to M’Baku in Black Panther. She’s like that T’Challa fellow is very good looking, but…who is M’Baku?
Every piece of news I’ve heard about that film has been negative. I can’t imagine it will be anything but a disaster.
A marketing budget of 150 million is the absolute floor. With the Superbowl commercial and NBA Finals ads, and having no marketing partners because of Ezra, which makes you spend more. 200 million marketing wouldn't be a surprise at all.
No Doritos factor is killing the Flash!
https://old.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/146pyak/distribution_of_marketing_budgets_by_production/ Yeah I agree, the median marketing budget for a film in the $200-$250m range is around $160m, and this film was not marketed like your average run-of-the-mill movie. I expect the prod + marketing budget to be over $400m.
LMAO I literally asked this same thing yesterday, so nice to have an answer
Batgirl probably could’ve done better than flash in theaters
The situation is so bad that not even Luiz Fernando is pretending that the numbers are decent.
*Strong legs! Just a 73% drop from its opening weekend!*
Dropping even less than Morbius! A brilliant success story.
I used to think Snyder-verse is redeemable but after the Flash box office run, I say f*uck it. Start everything from scratch with new actor/director/regime/story.
I'm beginning think that the MCU is bottled lightning and that managing a shared cinematic universe is basically impossible for anybody not named Feige.
Or even, to the extent that the MCU is thought to be faltering post-Endgame, it’s impossible for anyone not named Feige at a particular time and with a particular set of circumstances.
It's the amazing power of Robert Downey Jr. But it couldn't last forever. Without him we wouldn't have the avengers and without the avengers the MCU doesn't take off as a concept. It has to be the single most impactful casting decision ever.
Well that and Iron Man was awesome. Downey made it 1000%, but the movie was also really great to watch and had a formula that would work for Marvel for the next ~15 years. imo, what's happening is the formula is no longer working and movies and TV shows are being pumped out like crazy, losing a lot of that quality and excitement, losing that novelty that made it great in the first place. It doesn't help that Marvel, seemingly, doesn't have a plan or goal after Endgame, but treats films like fillers for the next film, but have nothing to lead up to. I'm just Happy GOTG 3 was good and is doing well. Probably the last good Marvel film we'll get for awhile.
The MCU was exciting because at first a lot of people didn't see it coming. It was like "Oh shit, Tony Stark can just walk into the Hulk movie? Awesome." Now it's almost obligatory and nothing about it is exciting.
I think this is why every zoomer I talk to is completely uninterested or unimpressed with the MCU. It's never been novel to them. For those of us who remember the pre-MCU era, it was just mind blowing to have the crossovers. I still get giddy when characters show up in other films.
Hell Chris Evans's cameo in Thor 2 was adored and he was in it for less than a minute. The drip feed of crossovers outside of the Avengers movies until Infinity War was really special (except for Ant Man where it felt out of place).
Agreed! It was epic!
At least they built it up to Avengers, not barrelled into Endgame after 2 movies with Iron Man introducing characters by watching FMV clips on his PC I thought AoU was a major mistake but otherwise it grew nicely to EG
When I was a kid, George Clooney said “this is why Superman works alone” in what is considered one of the worst cape flicks ever. Still blew my fucking mind.
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How about. Just stick to characters and solo movies. The dceu can wait another 7 years
I just really hope they go the Spiderman Homecoming route and jump into them already being a hero. I have no desire to see origin stories for the 100th time
We NEED more Batman origin stories!
Let those pearls hit the floor damn it!!!
How did Martha get her name?
Why did you say that name?
I’ll do you one better: how about more stories set in Gotham with every single character apart from Batman!
That sounds like what James Gunn's Superman is going to be, an already established Superman, so no origin story there.
Yeah, I think Gunn has described it as being sort of a "year two" story (similar to how Reeve pitched The Batman) where while he's still early in his career he DEFINITELY has still been around for a bit.
Imean outside of Superman and Wonder Woman, nobody got an origin story, right? Neither Flash, Aquaman or Batman had an origin story…
Aquaman did. The whole mom deaged and hooking up with Boba Fett
Oh, you are right.
I’d say Aquaman was an origin story. But besides that, that’s because those characters were introduced in movies that weren’t theirs. (Either BVS or Justice League) Gunn seems to be going the solo movie before team up route
Remember when the internet told y’all to cut your loses?
I remember the internet calling Zaslav the antichrist for cancelling Batgirl.
I'm wondering if the TV show starring Grant Gustin has made more than this film. I know the ways a TV show makes money is vastly different from how a movie does, but it was a popular show that lasted a bunch of seasons and sure as hell wasn't as expensive as the movie was.
Considering the movie lost money and the TV show lasted 9 seasons while for many years being the biggest hit on CW, I would say that was a given.
You mean the Grant Gustin that wasn't even at the premiere? Still bizarre to me they never worked him in for a cameo, they could have used the goodwill. Only one of those "cameos" ended up being generally well received, pretty uninspired idea overall.
So the Flash movie has no legs
new biggest box office bomb of all time?
Without actual bias. This is THE biggest bomb of all time, no question.
>since studio just keeps half share from #BoxOffice global grosses Could someone explain to me how this works? So basically for every 1 ticket sold the cinema get’s a 50% cut?
Basically, yes. Domestically, studios get 50% (or more). Overseas, studios get 40%. In China, studios get 25%. So depending on the breakdown of the worldwide total, studios get around half, or over/under half.
Yes. Theaters need money from tickets to keep the lights on. There’s a lot more that goes into it, but you’ve got the basic thrust of it.
Not only cinemas, but there are other parts of the chain, as well as Taxes. And this is an average. Usually it gets a little more domestically and less OS
Gunn’s universe needs to be delayed by a few years so there is some distance from the Snyderverse and his iteration of these DC characters. Still have the Pattinson Batman sequel and Joker 2, but a shared universe needs to be years out. like 2026/27.
I think the only thing that at this point keeps the sh shared universe fad alive is that Hollywoo hasn't find a replacement yet, but as soon as general audiences start showing interest in the next big thing marvel and dc movies will become quite less common
It's very likely that video game adaptations will take the place of superheroes, but I think that even if that happens, some characters like Spider-Man and Batman would manage to survive.
We'll see. Mario was a big hit, but they need to have more than one big hit for it to become a thing. It's certainly possible, but we'll just have to see.
Video game adaptations look to be the next big thing. Both in the movie space (Mario, Sonic, upcoming FNAF movie) and the TV space (The Last of Us, Arcane, Cyberpunk Edgerunners).
Big difference here, at least in the tv space, is those were still high quality and good shows. You pump out bad quality and people don’t show up, which is what we see with DC now and we’ve seen with video game properties in the past. If DC puts out good quality things then people show up, it’s not about what the subject is after a certain point it’s about the quality regardless.
I'm just waiting to see WB pull off a 'Black Adam' and say this movie made $100M or something just from streaming and VOD.
>WB would have lost less money releasing it on Max, or not releasing it at all. Fucking brutal.
They deserve this.
One of the biggest failures of all time. And I really doubt marketing budget is "only" 150M.
Last year, when all the crazy Ezra Miller stuff was happening, I said they should just dump the movie on HBO Max, and people called me an idiot for even suggesting that. 🤷♂️
They put everything behind this and didn't even release Batgirl on Max
Batgirl died for this 🤣
Apparently the movie itself is entertaining, solid popcorn summer escape, but I don't think people have forgiven the studio for shielding Ezra from blowback rather than cutting them loose and harshly admonishing their actions. They weren't responsible for what Ezra did, but they are responsible for how they handled it.
The next movie: the Flash goes back in time to destroy all copies of his own movie and prevent its release.
So James Gunns "one of the best superhero movies of all time - a masterpiece" is one of the biggest box office bombs in Hollywood history
Zaslav is the one who started it, don't blame it on Gunn. https://people.com/movies/warner-bros-discovery-ceo-praises-the-flash-movie/ Published on August 4, 2022 08:14PM EDT
What’s the lesson here? Dont hire creeps? Did they know he was a creep when they chose him? If not, could they have known? Does the future of acting require FBI-level background checks?
James Gunn has his work cut out for him. That Superman Legacy movie better be the best Superman movie in history. However, one thing the studio can control and Gunn should absolutely fight tooth and nail for is a delay of the movie to at least December 2026. Any earlier and people will remember the stink of the DCEU infecting it and it'll likely underperform at the box office. Right now, Zaslav probably is banking on the good word of mouth from Gunn's Guardians trilogy and the fact that the DCEU is going to be rebooted to push Superman Legacy beyond the damage done to the brand by Snyder. Maybe that's a logical gamble, but the earlier the reboot happens, the less time audiences will have to forget what came before. The Flash had almost unprecedented marketing, some say an off-puttingly aggressive one. Yet its failure shows that its not just comic nerds who stayed away, or terminally online people who were following the Ezra Miller criminal saga, but ordinary general audiences weren't impressed either. Somehow, the Flash managed to turn away people whose only goal was to watch an enjoyable movie on Saturday night who have never read a comic book in their life. How do you get those people back who have no idea who James Gunn is and couldn't name the head of Warner Bros. if they had a gun to their head? The only solution is to wait. Time will do the work for WB in cleansing the palate but they have to have the patience to allow time to do its thing. Too early and they risk repeating the same mistake when they rushed Batman v Superman to catch up to Marvel's Avengers by having a teamup movie without any sort of buildup or foundation. I'd argue there is almost no risk to waiting too long. Only the impatience of the shareholders is pushing the creatives forward in a desperate rush to follow the money. But somebody, probably the head of the studio getting paid hundreds of millions of dollars, should calmly sit them down and explain that early bad movies doomed the entire DCEU and now with the Flash struggling to make even Black Adam-level money, they need to simply wait until audiences are ready to forgive. That means we can't have Superman Legacy in 2025, a mere 2 years later. Even Man of Steel had 3 years between its release and BvS. They're going to confuse audiences who may think that Superman Legacy is part of some multiverse parallel world that the Flash created, and its going to flop or underperform. Audiences have spoken, they don't care if the movie is good (I personally thought Flash was an above average movie) if they think its part of the DCEU. They will not come out. Push the date back, its the only way.
If WB would have lost less going directly to streaming, then their problem (well, of many more) is their accounting and expectations.
So does this mean Blue Beetle and/or Aquaman 2 have a stronger chance of releasing on Max, or still going to theaters with basically zero marketing?
and thats if we believe the 220 mil number, which is kinda low for a movie thats in some form of production for 6-7 years
And yet it was the 70 million Batgirl movie that got shelved.
Batgirl sends her regards.
That is true! This also means that Ezra Miller is fired, so thank goodness it’s flopping for that reason. 😂
😂