50
votes
‘The Flash’ disappoints with $55 million debut, Pixar’s ‘Elemental’ flops with $29.5 million in battle of box office lightweights
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Authors
- Rebecca Rubin
- Published
- Jun 18 2023
- Word count
- 751 words
Not even a little surprising. The star of the movie has been very publicly self-destructing for years, and the (director?) had the gall to say, in effect, "yeah, you stupid plebians will forget about that, give us your money" as if that wouldn't have the opposite effect.
Honestly, The Flash is my favorite superhero, so this hurts, but I'm not going to go see it, at least in part out of spite. However long a shot it may have been, I really do think it would have been nice to see Grant Gustin replace Miller.
Aw don't discount away Shazam 1. I enjoyed it.
The director Adam Sandberg has a YouTube channel and posts about the work that goes into filmmaking.
I love behind the scenes nut and bolts information about almost any industry. For example, last week I watched a short on how VW makes it's own tires. Thanks for posting!
That reminds me that right around the time Ezra Miller went off the rails, WB suddenly scrapped the Batgirl movie which was in the final stages of post-production (so basically 95-99% done) and wrote it off as a tax deduction. It was one of the more controversial moves by the new CEO after the Warner Brothers Discovery merger, which was already under a lot of scrutiny for many other scrapped projects. The Ezra Miller stuff honestly felt like karma.
The big problem is that heroes drive these movies. They drive ticket sales, they drive merchandise. As a casual moviegoer who isn't super into superhero stuff (and I've read my share of comics, but not a diehard)... I agree with what many have said about the comics for a long time - Marvel has the better heroes, DC has the better villains. The problem is, villains don't get as much time to shine in these films, especially when there's weaknesses in the planning department. The "Joker" DID get a chance to shine in Joker, which is why that movie did gangbusters.
I've seen most of the Marvel movies up to Endgame and a few afterwards, and I honestly couldn't tell you a single MCU villain I found interesting. Thanos was okay but not nearly as good as in the limited amount of comics I've read. Other than him, nobody is really particularly memorable and most are just downright awful -- despite some really great stars. Michael Keaton is the only reason I bothered to go see Spider-Man Homecoming and he was wasted.
At this point I think WB knows this was going to skid because of the stars and they just went with it anyway. Same with Aquaman 2 with Heard. But then they haven't really seemed to learn their lesson, because at some point they were talking about how this film could get a sequel and James Gunn was talking specifically about bringing Miller back as The Flash which just makes one think "what the fuck is he thinking?" - to be clear, this was after all the shit that has come out about Miller.
The Flash couldn’t even reach the already tepid projections from earlier in the week.
It’s opening below Black Adam and will struggle to get to 300M worldwide. Terrible audience reception (B Cinemascore same as BvS and Eternals), and mixed reviews. I mean just terrible all around. Will probably be the biggest box office bomb of the year with its 220 million dollar budget (paired up nicely with the other biggest bomb of the year also from DC Shazam 2).
Elemental is a non-starter, with a 200 million dollar budget it’s also a big money loser for Disney.
Just a terrible depressing weekend all around.
Andy Muschietti was recently announced as the director of The Brave and the Bold (the DCU Batman) but I imagine after this he’ll be leaving the project.
Warner Bros bet big on Flash. Saving up their marketing budget to put all their eggs on this one basket. Utter disaster for them.
It's so weird to hear this because I haven't seen a single ad for it. It's probably because of targeted advertisements and I've shown zero interest in movies up to this point, but normally I see at least a hint.
Look up the lead actor, Ezra Miller. If the allegations are true then they are a violent, deranged, abusive, creep.
Not advertising is likely the studio distancing themselves from Ezra. They should have replaced them or just pulled the plug.
I have become a cynic, I don't believe it makes a difference for anyone when it comes to the big numbers, something had to go wrong besides that.
https://deadline.com/2023/06/box-office-the-flash-bomb-elemental-1235419478/
Huh, with people complaining in this thread about trailers before movies I wonder if those impressions weren't worth nearly as much as they thought they were.
I really enjoyed Elemental, but the marketing sucked.
It seems like they thought that the Pixar name would bring people in on its own, and now we’re doomed to Pixar being shoved right back into the straight-to-streaming box that they were put in during the pandemic.
I'd like to take my 5yo to Elemental. Wondering if you'd be willing to elaborate on the film: was there a lot of talking on it? Was there comedy? Anything inappropriate?
The lens of a 5yo basically means short attention span, so I'm trying to see if I should take the kid or not haha.
My 7 year old generally paid attention throughout. There were some slow bits. I really enjoyed it.
I think it really depends on the kid. If you’ve taken them to theatre before, I’d imagine it’d be fine.
The amount of dialogue didn’t really stick out as particularly a lot.
There are definitely comedic moments (they play a lot with element gags, though they came off more clever than cheesey for the most part).
And no, nothing inappropriate.
But there are a few slow scenes, so that might test patience a little.
If you do see it, I definitely recommend 3D, they did a really good job with it.
To be fair, Pixar hasn't really put out anything big or groundbreaking in a while - I would argue their last true hit with long lasting effect was Coco.
Well, they did win an Oscar for Soul and then covid hit immediately after. I think Luca and especially Turning Red really got burned by being direct-to-streaming during the pandemic. I think if Lightyear and Elemental had been the D+ pandy releases and Luca and Turning Red had been the post-pandy comeback movies Pixar would be in a much better place today.
Soul came out during the pandemic.
For some reason I thought Soul was 2019 not 2020, probably because it was the last Pixar theatrical release so I just assumed it was the last pre-pandemic movie.
I did like Luca - I didn't get as invested in Turning Red though. It makes sense they got a bit lost by pandemic circumstances.
I really disliked the animation style in Turning Red. Couldn’t finish it.
I had an almost visceral reaction to calling it the "pandy," similar to the reaction my college roommate had to the word "moist."
I think Soul is my favorite Pixar movie ever, but I'm a huge jazz fan.
I think I'll still watch it, but Pixar should be top notch. That's their brand, being good movies. But if they can't keep it up there may be cuts coming.
In a post covid world, are people going back to the movie theatres like before? Especially with inflation hurting everyone in the wallet.
Personally I think the last movie I saw at a theatre was Bladerunner 2049. The price of tickets is way too high and having to deal with the noise of other people means I would much rather watch films at home.
Mario just hit a billion and 500 domestic.
Last year Top Gun: Maverick, Jurassic World Dominion, and Avatar: The Way of Water all hit a billion worldwide (Avatar made over two billion) and both Top Gun and Avatar made over 600 million domestic.
Anecdotally, yes. I've been to Mario, GotG, Spiderverse and they were all packed. On metrics, annual box office numbers haven't quite recovered to pre-pandemic numbers but they are on an upward trend.
I've seriously thought about going to all three of those. I even looked up showtimes for Spiderverse. In the end, I just didn't feel like sitting through a movie anymore, especially taking a five year old for one that is over two hours. We don't always make it through TV episodes! But I also just don't love the movies, and will likely buy Spiderverse as soon as it hits digital based on how much we loved the first one.
I found a local art-house theater and have been attending more than pre-covid. It's typically sold out for opening night of new releases and even for special showings of 35mm and 70mm screenings. I realize not everyone has the option, but supporting a local theater showing more interesting movies than just new releases has increased my excitement about going to the movies.
I went back in to see Everything Everywhere All At Once. Probably would go again for certain films but I'd choose weird hours when it isn't busy and be wearing my N96 the whole time
So many blockbusters are just absolutely crashing. Spider-Verse is the only one really making it out good. Quite nuts. I wonder what next month is going to be like with Barbie and Oppenheimer. Cause it really seems like families/people in general decided to go to one movie this month and Spider-Verse won that.
For the summer Guardians 3 and Spider-Verse are the only bright spots so far.
Indiana Jones doesn’t seem like it’s gonna fare better. But July is gonna give us Oppenheimer, Barbie, and Mission Impossible which should at least pick up some of the slack.
After that though the rest of the year seems bleak outside of Dune and The Marvels.
Oh yeah, GOTG3 was summer, but yeah that’s pretty much it. I’m just wondering if next month might end up being a similar bloodbath with only one coming out on top. But upon reflection Barbie and Oppenheimer both have pretty reasonable budgets from what I remember and I think that’s really the problem here, the out of control budgets, so maybe it’ll be different next month. Had Elemental had a lower budget this opening wouldn’t be nearly as dire for instance.
I'm hoping studios are taking notice and and will start scaling down movies. Not everything needs to be a 200+ million dollar blockbuster, and especially these days families can't afford to go to multiple tentpole movies a month with the cost of tickets and concessions.
Flash has been fighting a losing battle from the start thanks to all the news and controversy with Ezra Miller. They seemed to know that because they put a lot of emphasis on Batman in the recent movie trailers, only revealing the Flash in the last few seconds.
Elemental is a bit more surprising to me though, just because it's Pixar. But then, the trailers haven't really grabbed me. And the latest one I heard (I think it was for Elementals, was in the other room) said "From the studio that brought you The Incredibles." That just stood out to me as odd because usually I'd hear that from campaigns trying to capitalize on other films' successes, and Pixar seems like it wouldn't need that. Also weird that they emphasized The Incredibles over any other film. Hearing the opening weekend numbers, I guess they realized it wasn't going to be that popular.
Are we supposed to feel sorry that they didn’t make the profits they forecasted. Why is always news when a movie is supposedly loosing money. It’s almost as if this is done to increase sales or some type of marketing ploy. This doesn’t even take in account of post box office sales ie dvds, streaming and/or video on demand. The opportunities they have to maximum their return on their investment almost negates the entire article.
Generally speaking, news outlets that focus on the entertainment business will report on the entertainment business.
An unprofitable but good mid-budget movie can eventually turn profitable after its box office run via Blu-Ray/VOD/streaming/etc. In order for that to pan out, your film either needs needs to have been close to profitable, or become a "cult classic" that a sizable number of people will pay to continue watching at home. Indeed, there are many famous examples of exactly this happening.
But an expensive box office bomb will struggle. The way box office earnings are reported is often misleading, because they usually take the gross ticket sales (i.e. before the venues/distributors get their cut, and before directors, writers, and star-level actors get their backend) and compares it against the production budget. For big movies like these, the marketing budget is often pretty similar to the production budget. So a $200m superhero movie ends up costing closer to $400m once everything is said and done. All these things factored in, a $200m movie often needs $500-$600m in gross box office receipts just to break even.
The Flash will be lucky to break $300m total ticket sales, and that is before deducting all the other things I mentioned. At a $220m production budget (and likely similar marketing spend), the film will need to pull in at least another $300m from Blu-Ray/VOD/streaming/etc. just to break even post-box office. And with the tepid reception this movie is getting, I don't see that happening.
Honestly I just can’t stand super hero movies anymore. I feel like they’ve been dragged out way longer than any other trend (like zombies or world war 2)
I've just recently gotten back to the theater regularly, had seen only two movies out in the last year and a half. Then signed up for AMC membership the start of the month and have been to 7 movies so far in June, will probably do 2 this week, and 2-3 next week.
Without the membership I wouldn't have gone to any of the 7 I've seen this month, and doubt there'd be more than a couple that would draw me in all year. I'd just wait to see some of them at home, others I may never even hear about. Hadn't been paying much if any attention to what's coming.
Pre-covid I had the same membership and really enjoyed seeing films I never would have bothered with otherwise. Caught some real gems simply because I had extra tickets that would go to waste.
For those unfamiliar the membership is $20/mo and comes with 13 tickets, including premium formats (3D, IMax, etc), so even 3 shows a month puts me a bit ahead over buying the tickets outright. Unfortunately my local AMC is a 'Classic' which means it's pretty basic, none of the upgrades like Dolby, has a lieMax though.
13 tickets a month? Maybe I need to sign up...
Yeah, 3 per week, averages to 13 per month. If you have the time to go at least three times a month you'll break even, or even be a little bit ahead of paying as you go.
I wasn't gonna see this movie until I saw that one leaked scene and I thought that was extremely funny. Wish I hadn't spoiled it for myself.
You want me to start bringing my family back to the movie theater? Here's what it'll take:
Stop only showing one kids movie at a time. For a 8+ screen multiplex, I need at least 2 different G and 3 different PG movies to choose from. With shows ending no later than 7:30 PM. Save those late night screenings for the teens and adults.
Especially in the summer, you should have a constant parade of kids movies with showtimes starting at 8 AM. Old movies are fine, almost better. You wanna do an old airing of Fern Gully? Get my family of four in the door for $10, and we'll blow $30 on food easy.
No more than 2 trailers, no other ads. My kids barely have patience to sit for a 2 hour movie, let alone taking on 30 minutes of ads.
Consider bringing back an intermission for any movie longer than 1:30. Find a nice spot to break around the 45-60 minute mark so the kids can stretch their legs, pee, and buy more food.
Even just one of those things would triple my chances of considering a movie theater over popping some popcorn and setting up the projector in the garage. I've got 50+ years of movie archives to choose from, I can be a lot pickier about loading my family in the car for a popcorn flick.
If anybody with a lot of money to burn is reading, I live near a tourist destination and would love to rennovate one of the rundown dead theaters and get it operational as a family oriented destination. There would be a playground in the lobby. PM me.
This seems like a bit of a non-sequitur. These movies did badly in the box office because they’re not good movies. Plenty of movies have done very well for themselves this year, we’re just coming off of the smash success from Spider-Man. For the Flash, this is DC’s sixth flop in a row so it’s not exactly ground breaking. Pixar has also had a large fall from grace in their last few releases.
Here's the secret though:
I'd take my kids to see it anyway if more of the things above were true.
A movie does not need to be amazing to draw me to a theater. It needs to not be an inconvienient recipie for stress and disaster.
Sure megablockbusters are doing well, how about the average fare? How about theaters themselves? They're going bankrupt left and right cause they purely try to scrape the leftovers from the megablockbuster.
They need to listen to you. Why should I sit through ads when I paid to get in? It's insulting, and one of the chief reasons I wont even consider going to a movie theater anymore.
You guys can always show up a little late and miss the previews.
And then take whatever seats are left over. It's just not worth it. I have an adequate viewing system at home, and the exclusivity of seeing it in the theater before watching it at home no longer really means anything to me.
Wait, you guys have theaters without reserved seats? I haven't seen one of those in like 15 years.
Most US theaters still work that way afaik
Definitely depends on the location. In my area of the US, every theater is reserved seating. This includes most theaters in an hour drive as well.
Yeah must be regional. Where I grew up only the rewlly swanky ones have reserved seating, but the normal ones are first-come-first-serve. When I moved to Germany I was really shocked that all the theaters had reserved seating!
Over the past 15 years, all the local theaters renovated or closed. After renovation, all of them have nice reclining leather seats and reserved seating. One of the theaters had some really small theater rooms, so now they only seat like 6-8 people with the new large seats, which I quite like. So I think it is something that is going to eventually roll out across different parts of the country. As soon as one renovates in an area, it pretty much forces all the others to renovate or close. We had one theater change hands 2 or 3 times and then close. Another theater downtown never renovated then closed. This happened within 5 years of my 2 favorite local theaters renovating. Also they now allow and serve alcohol, which is sweet.
I'm not particularly convinced that'll happen here in the near future, but maybe eventually. My little brother is an avid moviegoer so I'm sure I'll get all the updates if it hits our area.
The only theater in my town doesn't have reserved seats, it's an AMC Classic. Just a really old, run-down theater with the AMC logo slapped on it. The seats are pretty awful tiny plastic things and the speakers all sound muffled. But with a student discount (if it applies to the movie) you can get in for $4/person. It's one of the only entertainment options in this rural wonderland.
I saw someone else post that. Can you not buy tickets online beforehand
at your theaters? I don’t think I’ve bought a ticket at the box office day of for anything other than a completely spontaneous movie outing in like the last 5 years. If it’s for a new release, I always buy them beforehand online, especially if I’m going with other people to prevent the can’t-get-adjacent-seats issue.
edit: and the theaters have reserved seats, that you reserve when you buy the ticket
This is what I like about reserved seating in theaters over having to get in the theater first for good seats.
Reserved seating theaters charge more for the convenience. Not all areas have theaters with that option either.
This strategy does not work for people with young children.
Yes! I can't believe there are really movies 2:30 or longer with no intermissions! Every time I go to the movies, I have to watch in horror as a friend goes to use the bathroom, worrying they'll miss a big exposition scene or the best moment in the movie. It has happened before...
What also sucks is the prevalence of post credits scenes, even in non comic book movies like John Wick 4. If the movie is over, I've been waiting to use the bathroom for 2 hours or more. I don't wanna sit there not knowing when the last scene is gonna be.
I usually check online to see if there’s any post-credit stingers as soon as the movie ends. (knowing before might diminish the initial impact of the final pre-credits scene)
As a dad of an 8 and a 4 year old, the greatest thing about the Mario movie was that it was 90 mind long.
I'm also a father, of a 5yo, and I 100% agree. In my case (in Canada) there also wasn't many ads before it which is unusual and helped a lot (not sure if it was luck or what).
But I'd say in general there just hasn't been very many kids movies since COVID. Even Elemental targets slightly older kids, at least from what I've read.
The only other one was the Paw Patrol movie which I thought was really good, and maybe the Minions movie.
I also took my kid to Puss in Boots but that was a huge mistake. The wolf was way too scary for kids (at least for mine).
Intermissions really do need a comeback. I'm sure there's a better profit margin to fit in an extra screening per day. Potential for another full theater of ticket sales vs a percentage of a screening buying a couple concessions. Unfortunately with so many movies pushing towards three hours to "maximize" entertainment value, it has a toll.
I recently watched RRR at a local theater that kept intermission. It was so refreshing to get a few minutes to stretch and use the restrooms before sitting back down to another 90 minutes of movie.
I have no evidence to back this up, so it's a personal conspiracy theory - but i swear the tiered quality of screenings were artificially induced. In the lower tiers - labeled "2D" at my local theater - they just turned down the volume compared to 15ish years ago. The upper tier - labeled as "IMAX 2D" - seems to be no different than the lower tier, except the volume is turned way up, almost ear splittingly so at some points. Then they have "ScreenX 2D" - I have no fuckin idea what this is. Then they have 3D. I understand the difference 3D brings, but all the others just seem like artificially designed tiers to extract more money out of customers. That's why I don't go to the theater anymore.
As someone who worked in a movie theater at one point in my life, there are differences between the tiers. IMAX is a big jump from standard (beyond just the volume). If I had to guess, you maybe just remember the standard being nicer than it was.
As far as the volume, that's theater and movie dependent.