Despite being all about the fastest man alive, The Flash has taken a literal decade to enter theaters, so to say Warner Bros. is hoping for big things from the Scarlet Speedster’s solo outing is putting it mildly. Despite early ringing endorsements from such surprising famous fans as Stephen King and Tom Cruise, reviews are somewhat more mixed and, if box office projections are accurate, the Ezra Miller vehicle is worryingly close to echoing an opening weekend of an infamous recent bomb.
While Box Office Pro is pitching The Flash‘s domestic figures this Father’s Day weekend somewhere in the wide bracket of $60-$80 million, Deadline has narrowed down that number considerably to predict that the Andy Muschietti-directed effort could come in with a $70 million gross in the United States and Canada across its first few days of distribution.
As well as trailing a full $50 million behind what Marvel’s own turkey Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania drew in for its opening back in February, that $70 million prediction also means it’s set to come perilously close to Black Adam. The Dwayne Johnson failed franchise-starter brought in $67 million domestically last October, going on to tank hard with a total worldwide gross of just under $400.
And, wouldn’t you know it, the mere whiff of a comparison to Black Adam is giving those who suffer from superhero movie schadenfreude a bad case of the guilty giggles.
Did Warner Bros. sabotage itself with all those early screenings or is the fact June is so stacked for new movies to blame?
The glass half-full way of looking at it, though, is that Aquaman likewise opened to $67.9 million in December 2018, and it was able to rise far above its weak domestic debut to bring in $1 billion across the globe. So the story isn’t over for The Flash just yet, even if it does end up skimming a couple of mil off its projected figures. That said, all eyes are on Barry Allen to see if the hero really can outrun anything, even the old DCEU curse.