Warner Bros. seems to have fallen flat on its face once again after its premiere of the long-awaited DC Comics superhero film, “The Flash,” seems to have raced to mediocrity at the box office.
There appears to be a host of reasons for why this film is tanking. Films for the DC Comics characters are still floundering due to the recent effort to overhaul the whole universe of films and characters, for one. But this film has been troubled from the beginning. Fans expected cameos that weren’t delivered due to the new direction the studio wants to take, the movie went through multiple directors and writers, and then there were the many troubles — including arrests — of the film’s woke star, Ezra Miller. Not to mention that Hollywood’s box office take has still not recovered its pre-COVID era earning power, despite the fear of catching the virus in public having faded long ago.
“The Flash” opened on June 16, but will be lucky to come in third during its second weekend, despite reviews that were not altogether horrible.
As AV Club reports, “the Warner Bros. superhero movie is expected to come in a somewhat shocking third in sales this weekend, coming in behind both Pixar’s ‘Elemental’ — which is holding on to audiences much better, despite a crappy opening weekend — and Sony’s ‘Across The Spider-Verse,’ now in its fourth weekend.”
The film is set to lose an astounding 70 percent of its audience participation for its sophomore weekend, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Estimates thus far show that “The Flash” will only bring in about $85 million domestically in two weeks.
However, “The Flash” currently sits at roughly $210 million worldwide. So, it will likely at least break even when distribution and advertising costs are added to the film’s total $200 million cost versus its box office take.
It’s impossible to say, of course, but one has to wonder how badly the woke star of the film has impacted this terrible box office take.
The actor, who started his acting career in 2001 and who insists that people use the “they/them” pronouns to address him, has not helped the film with the horrendous publicity he’s earned for his obscene and inexplicable behavior. He’s been accused of sexual assaults, bar fights, public outbursts, been arrested time and again, and was even accused of perpetrating “cult-like” behavior.
Should DC have fired Miller?
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Just to name a few incidents Miller is accused of, a woman in Iceland called the police after Miller supposedly began choking her and then smashed her to the ground during a confrontation in a pub in Reykjavík, Iceland.
The supposed victim told People magazine that she thought Miller was joking when he told her he could “take her in a fight,” and soon enough followed her outside the bar and attacked her screaming, “This is what you wanted! This is what you wanted!”
He was later arrested in Hawaii in connection with another assault at a bar and his mugshot was posted by the police department. In police vest cam footage of the arrest, he is seen blasting the officers for calling him “sir” instead of “they/them,” People reported.
Miller also positioned himself as an ultra-work, activist, too. In 2018, for instance, he told The Hollywood Reporter, “I don’t identify as a man. I don’t identify as a woman. I barely identify as a human.” He also accused Hollywood executives of trying to rape him when he was in his teen years.
In 2022 he tried to gain a reputation for anti-gun and anti-racism activism, too, with an Instagram video — that he later deleted — in which he told the Ku Klux Klan to “kill yourselves with your own guns,” Variety reported at the time.
Miller has also been accused of even worse crimes. He was accused of sexually abusing an 18-year-old girl and grooming her with mental manipulation akin to cult-like behavior.
In yet another case of this cult-like, grooming behavior, a pre-teen boy in Massachusetts was granted an order of protection from Miller after the actor was accused of harassing him and his family.
With all this erratic behavior so publicly reported, it might not be a surprise that relatively few Americans were interested in rewarding this man with millions in box office dollars. And despite all these examples of his fragile mental state, Warner Bros. stuck with him as the star of their film, despite some early discussion of firing him.
Not even bringing back Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck as a pair of multiverse Batmen and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman (in a small cameo) could save this film. Will Hollywood finally start to take notice of their problem after a string of woke box office bombs? Stay tuned, America.
