The 2023 struggle for DC movies to make their impact on the cinematic landscape may be about to hit its own Mariana Trench with the arrival of Blue Beetle, according to box office predictions. Black Adam and The Flash both delivered reasonable opening weekends but ultimately failed on account of their massive budgets, and the less said about Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ underwhelming performance the better. However they could all pale in comparison to the incredibly low $12-17 million opening weekend being predicted for Blue Beetle.
James Gunn – bless him – has tried to do his best to instigate some interest in Blue Beetle by making sure that everyone is aware that the character of Jamie Reyes will be carrying on in the new DCU, but it seems that even that cannot get people into cinemas to watch a DC movie. If the projections shared by Box Office Pro turn out to be accurate, not only will Blue Beetle have the worst opening of a DC movie in recent memory (discounting Wonder Woman 1984, which pulled in $16.7 million during its Day & Date release in the Covid pandemic), but the film is also predicted to earn just $55 million at the domestic box office in total. Considering the movie comes with a $120 million budget, this kind of result would be nothing short of another disaster for Warner Bros. Discovery.
Related: Blue Beetle: Plot, Cast, Release Date, and Everything Else We Know
Blue Beetle’s Box Office Fail Could Make Batgirl’s Cancelation Worse.
As if things don’t look bad enough for Blue Beetle’s box office, the film’s stars will not be coming out to promote the movie thanks to the ongoing actor’s strike, which is something that can only hinder any chance WBD had to try and drum up more interest in the film. Of course there was at one point a chance that the movie may not have even made it to cinemas, having originally been planned as a Max exclusive along with Batgirl. Having been saved from the cull of projects that saw Batgirl scrapped, Blue Beetle now looks like it will be a bigger loss for the studio than Batgirl’s release would ever have been.
While there are many “unknown” superheroes that have hit cinemas and become big hits, for the DC franchise to try and do that when even its biggest hitters are not doing the business almost set them up for a fall. While Blue Beetle is well known in some circles, for general cinema audiences that is not necessarily true, and that certainly won’t help the cause.
In contrast, there were many things going for Batgirl, including appearances by Michael Keaton as Batman and Brendan Fraser as the villain Firefly. The film eventually became a tax write-off, disappointing many fans and creating a real sense of animosity towards Warner Bros. Discovery by fans who still cannot understand why a movie that was practically complete ended up being binned.
Soon enough, we will know exactly how much of a bad financial decision releasing Blue Beetle was when the movie is released on August 18 as the penultimate DC movie of 2023.
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