The DCEU’s Last Box Office Bombs Are Made Even Sadder By A 3

The DCEU's last three box office bombs - The Flash, Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Black Adam - are made worse by DC breaking a 3-year record in 2022.

The last three DCEU box office bombs - The Flash, Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Black Adam - are made worse by the fact the franchise broke a three-year record in 2022 with one of its releases. Since it began with Man of Steel, the DCEU has been plagued by movies that have struggled to earn critical acclaim and perform well at the box office. There have been a few bright spots, like 2017's Wonder Woman and 2018's Aquaman, the latter of which earned over $1 billion in its box office run, but behind-the-scenes issues and changes have led to an uneven franchise with mixed success.

Now, as the newly launched DC Studios, spearheaded by co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran, looks to give the DCEU a soft reboot and relaunch as the DC Universe, a number of the most recent releases have struggled even more than earlier franchise installments. In late 2022, Black Adam wasn't a massive box office success, earning $393.3 million on a budget of $190-260 million; Shazam! Fury of the Gods, which was expected to be a lower earner, performed even worse than expectations with $133.8 million on a budget of $125 million. However, The Flash was a historic box office bomb, earning only $268.5 million on a budget of $200-$220 million. These failures are made worse when juxtaposed with the success of one 2022 DC release: The Batman.

Despite releasing concurrently on HBO Max and in theaters in March 2022, The Batman went on to earn $771 million against a reported budget of $185-200 million, making it a certifiable box office success. In fact, The Batman was such a high performer, it came in at #7 on the list of top-grossing movies in 2022. When it earned that spot, it became the first DC movie in three years to do so. The last time a DC movie had been in the top-performing movies list was Joker in 2019, which earned $1.074 billion against a budget of $55-70 million.

Since The Batman's release, four DC movies have hit theaters and none appear to be headed toward making it into the highest-grossing movie lists of their respective years. Black Adam didn't earn enough to make it onto the list of 2022 movies and since The Flash and Shazam! Fury of the Gods have completed their theatrical runs without enough to break into the top 10 of 2023, they'll miss out as well. Blue Beetle also isn't on track to crack the top 10, leaving Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom as the last option to continue The Batman's trend.

Although the Shazam sequel and Blue Beetle were never expected to reach the heights of The Batman, the fact that neither The Flash nor Black Adam could is certainly a disappointment that's only further highlighted by The Batman's success. Both The Flash and Black Adam had a lot going for them, with Dwayne Johnson headlining the latter and the former bringing back Michael Keaton's Batman. They also both had massive promotional pushes behind the movies, but couldn't deliver in box office earnings or compare to the success of The Batman.

Although The Flash and Black Adam were both envisioned as superhero blockbusters, they ended up flopping at the box office - unlike The Batman. One factor helping the latest reincarnation of the Dark Knight to perform well was the popularity of Batman as a character. Not only is he one of the most well-known superheroes from DC, Bruce Wayne has been a popular cinematic figure for more than three decades. Comparatively, Black Adam was a completely new and unknown character, while The Flash had a small amount of recognition from Ezra Miller's earlier appearances in the DCEU. Neither were as popular as Batman, even a new version the character.

Further, both Black Adam and The Flash earned poor-to-middling reviews, with Black Adam scoring a rotten 38 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, while The Flash eked out a 63 percent; The Batman, on the other hand, has a certified fresh 85 percent score. The narratives around Black Adam and The Flash were fraught with poor reviews and, in the case of the latter, controversies tied to the star. These factors, along with the changing nature of movie-going, led to The Batman performing so much better at the box office. Now, with The Flash, Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Blue Beetle unlikely to make it into the top-grossing movies of 2023, that leaves Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom as the last chance to keep The Batman's streak going before the DCEU gets relaunched as the DCU.