From The Flash to Black Adam, 7 Much-Hyped Superhero Movies That Flopped at the Box Office Post-COVID Lockdown
With superhero movies recently disappointing both critically and commercially, we are taking a look at five of the biggest superhero movies that surprisingly failed at the box office.
The post-covid box office for superhero movies and blockbusters in general has been weird to say the least. While the likes of Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick make all the money in the world, it’s the now long-running franchises that are being left behind as they fail to make a huge impression. While you get a few billion dollars grossing films here and there, it’s not as common as they used to be. Year-Ender 2022: From Top Gun Maverick to The Batman, 7 of the Highest Grossing Films of the Year!
Movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Batman were surely able to make a huge dent in that sphere, but a lot of comic book movies especially haven’t come close to making a huge amount considering the pre-release hype they carry online. There have been some major superhero flops post-COVID, and that’s why we will be taking a look at five of the biggest superhero movies that flopped at the box office in the last few years.
Morbius
Starting the list off with a bang, not everyone expected Morbius to be good, however people were still excited to see what exactly would become of it considering just how much the film had been delayed. Unfortunately upon the film's release, Morbius just couldn't get in any money as the film grossed over $167 million on a $75 million budget. To even add fuel to the fire, Sony would release the film once more after its initial run only for it to flop again.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods
The classic case of a film receiving no advertising at all and just disappearing away into the wind, Shazam! Fury of the Gods deserved better to say the least. Coming off the highly successful Shazam!, the sequel would barely go on to make $133 million despite having a relatively low budget of $110 million considering the genre it is playing in.
The Suicide Squad
This one is the most baffling out of the bunch because it’s a great film that was unfortunately sabotaged by a really bad release date and strategy. Release in August, 2021, it came out right at the height of COVID where majority of the theatres were still closed despite the lockdown opening them up, and the strategy of the film being released the same day on HBO Max as well certainly destroyed the legs it could have had. What unfortunately lead is for the James Gunn-directorial to only earn $168 million of a $185 million budget.
Eternals
Eternals was supposed to be Marvel’s huge return to form in a post-COVID world considering theatres had massively opened up by the time it came out. A huge star-studded cast with an Oscar winning director attached to it – success was in its DNA and yet Eternals sadly only grossed $402 million on an estimated $236 million budget. It certainly didn’t help that the pre-release reviews were underwhelming as well.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Heralded to be the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s big start to Phase Five and set up the big multiversal bad of the franchise – Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was disappointing to say the least. With bad visuals and a story where nothing of consequence really happens, the audiences did take a not of it and made the film one of the more lower grossing films of the franchise. It did break even its $200 million budget by grossing $476 million, but the returns on that itself were completely underwhelming to say the least.
Black Adam
Dwayne Johnson surely staked his entire career on Black Adam to be a huge success only for it to become of the more comically huge flops at the box office. A budget that was estimated to be around $195 million with an aggressive marketing campaign that surely cost half of what the film took to make, it earned a measly $393 million and losing almost $100 million in the process. To say that it was one of the more boring entries in the already mixed franchise of DCEU, even a returning Henry Cavill couldn’t save it.
The Flash
And coming to the talk of the week, The Flash is on track to gross even less than Black Adam. A budget of $200 million with an advertising campaign that cost a reported $65 million, the movie has to earn more than $400 million just to break even, which it doesn’t look like it will be able to. Opening way below expectations, the film currently sits at $136 million at the box office in its opening week, which is certainly not impressive considering the scale of it. The Flash Box Office: From Ezra Miller's Controversies to Constant Delays, 5 Major Reasons Why the DC Film is Failing to Find Success Worldwide.
These movies are the perfect examples of audiences perhaps being tired of bad superhero films. Not fatigue in general, but rather a desire for a better product considering a lot of films like the recently released Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 certainly did make an impressive impact. Here is hoping things can turn for the better in the future.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 21, 2023 04:27 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).