The success of Barbie has been a rare bright spot for Warner Bros. this year, with Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie almost single-handedly ensuring the studio’s feature film division turns a profit following the disastrous run of results to have greeted the DCU.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Flash, and Blue Beetle have all flopped to send the decade-old superhero universe out with a whimper instead of a bang, and there’s a growing belief that not even the sequel to the comic book company’s single highest-grossing release ever will be able to stop the bleeding.
WB may have delayed Dune: Part Two, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, and Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim as the strikes continue to wreak havoc with the entire industry, but James Wan and Jason Momoa’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom remains locked in for Dec. 20, with Timothee Chalamet’s Wonka also standing firm to make its theatrical bow five days earlier.
As a result, the belief creeping in as that DC no longer wants to delay the inevitable death of its first iteration, leaving the Aquaman sequel where it is having effectively abandoned all hope of the mythology avoiding its fourth box office bomb in the space of less than a year.
Obviously, you can make the argument that Wonka is staying put, too, but on the other side of the coin there’s also the chance Warner Bros. is shooting itself in the foot by dropping an all-ages spectacular from the director of the mighty Paddington and its follow-up less than a week before the latest installment in an IP that’s been running on fumes for years.