It’s been nearly two years since The Flash hit theaters in 2023, and the film remains one of the most infamous bombs in recent comic book movie history. Its director, Andy Muschietti, isn’t confused about why the film failed, though. During an interview on Radio Tu’s La Baulera del Coso, Muschietti said that he believes The Flash performed so poorly because it wasn’t as widely appealing as everyone, including himself and its producers at Warner Bros. Pictures, hoped it would be.
“The Flash failed, among all the other reasons, because it wasn’t a movie that appealed to all four quadrants. It failed at that,” Muschietti argued. “When you spend $200 million making a movie, [Warner Bros.] wants you to bring even your grandmother to the theaters.”
In the same interview, the filmmaker — whose other directorial credits include 2017’s IT and 2019’s IT: Chapter Two — revealed that he’s learned in the time since he made The Flash that some viewers aren’t nearly as interested in the film’s titular hero as they are in other DC characters like Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. “I’ve found in private conversations that a lot of people just don’t care about the Flash as a character,” Muschietti noted. “Particularly the two female quadrants. All of that is just the wind going against the film I’ve learned.”
The Flash received notably mixed reviews from critics when it was released and it only grossed around $271 million at the worldwide box office. That might not seem like a particularly bad box office performance, especially when compared to the $100 million and $59 million grosses of more recent comic book misfires like Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter. However, The Flash reportedly cost — as Muschietti notes — around $200 million to make. Warner Bros. hoped at the time that the film would be able to inject some new life and excitement back into its DC projects, but it ended up falling far short of the studio’s expectations for it.
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The movie’s failure helped bring WB’s DC Extended Universe to an unsurprisingly anticlimactic close in 2023. Its performance doesn’t seem to have hurt Muschietti’s career, though. On the contrary, the filmmaker is currently set to direct The Brave and the Bold, which will introduce viewers for the first time to the new DC Universe’s take on, among other iconic characters, Batman and Robin.
The Flash is streaming now on Max.