In a lot of ways, everything about selling The Flash was evocative of the Ed Norton Hulk movie, but on a more epic and pathetic scale. "Please see this movie it has more than Ezra Miller as the Flash not that there's anything wrong with Ezra Miller as the Flash hahaha."

I mean, it's looking to go 70+ which I think is more than solid. Most Marvel first entries were in the same range, and Flash isn't a top tier superhero. I think Keaton helped a lot to get it where it was though. He's the only aspect that made me interested in seeing this film. I think Miller was the worst character in Justice League next to Cyborg, but not bad.

Maybe that's the problem. This is Thanksgiving leftovers for the third straight day.

Weird... Flash got a B Cinemascore wtf lol

I hold my hand up as getting overexcited at The Flash's prospects, but if you'd asked me two years ago I'd have probably said about $60-70m opening. It's just that in the last year or so it was revealed that Batman was in it, Keaton coming back, and the trailers/posters came out that made it look very buzzy. But going back to normal, it is only The Flash, he's not a top tier superhero, and Ezra Miller isn't a popular actor either. So, in retrospect we should have known (we kinda did) we just let our wildest expectations get away from reality.

This one impacts WB's credibility. They were pushing this to be the best superhero movie ever, putting out in the press how much people like Cruise liked it, just feels like they hoodwinked moviegoers a bit.

In a strange analogy, the demise of DC movies reminds me a bit of M. Night's post Signs run until about Split. His movies were getting more and more detested that people started booing in screenings when his name showed up.

He ostracized The Last Airbender fans. He ruined Will Smith's career before Will Smith ruined it himself with After Earth. Lady In The Water. The Happening. Seemed like a downward spiral. On the + side, he turned that around and made a recovery, which DC absolutely will do. It's got very hyped individual movies in the pipeline.

Pixar's brand feels like it's almost going to be harder to recover than DC's. They were pre-Marvel seen once as the flawless studio for commercial and critical prestige. Disney acquired them for that. I do wonder just how far the Pixar enterprise value has fallen. I love Toy Story but that can't go on forever and we saw what happened when they tried to branch out with Lightyear in epic failure fashion.

All of the openers are disappointing. Fucking Transformers opened higher than The Flash if estimates hold.

#'s so far:

The Flash $24.5M
Elemental $11.8M
Spiderverse $8.13M -51% $260.71M
Transformers $5,250,000 -80% $85,872,183
TLM $3.7M -46% $245,659,129
GOTG $1.3M -36% $340,660,355
The Blackening $2,550,000
Fast X $520,000 -66% $140,903,305
The Super Mario Bros. Movie $160,000 -75% $571,619,980

Limited:
Asteroid City $350,000 6 $58,333 PTA
Past Lives $261,371 +29% 85 $3,075 PTA $1,402,242

Yay for Asteroid City! Could pull $1M from 6 theaters.

LOL at Transformers. Knew it was going to drop but looks like $150M may be out the window and Fast may hold it off afterall.

24m for the Flash. Omg what a disaster.

Don’t say “expectations were too high” clearly this was meant to be the movie that “saves DC” and open to 100m and close over 300m. The 220m budget demonstrates that.

If it weren’t for the lack of competition the next few weeks, it would have a chance to to sub 150m domestic. As is, looks like it will do maybe 160m domestic

Have we ever had two studio flops so monumental the same weekend?

Know we've had big studio flops resulting in leadership changes but I would be shocked not to see some leadership change at Pixar after this. Variety has the 3day weekend estimate at $28M so will just barely pass $30M over the FOUR DAYS. LY was bad. Elemental will barely make it past half of LY's 3day tally.

Below Black Adam is pretty bad. Oof.

I'm more embarrassed for Pixar here. DC was a mess we all knew about. This is Pixar facing the music from Disney+.

Mario $574M ish total
Spider-verse 2 $330M+
Puss $185M (mostly holdover grosses this year)

Coming up:
TMNT - Almost certainly could see this outgross Elemental
Ruby Killam - Likely mid tier performer but what a WTF if this somehow grossed more than Elemental.
Trolls - Strong contender to make more.
Wish - Could certainly make more.
Paw Patrol - Likely mid tier.
Migration - Likely to make more given its cozy release date over the holidays.

So Pixar could very well not even make the top 5 animated movies for the year. It definitely seems like its the most expensive animated movie of the year so to not achieve that would be sad.

For comparison sake:

Lightyear $20,705,945
Ratatouille $16,452,942
The Good Dinosaur $15,529,133 (Fri after a Wed opening)
Onward $12,096,726
Toy Story 1 $11,493,059 (Fri after a Wed opening)

Elemental $11.8M

So Elemental is just barely past TS1's first Friday but that's with 28 years of inflation, TS1 having a Wed opening and Pixar not yet being a brand with their first movie.

Yesterday it was announced tge flash director was chosen for the new Batman film, i wonder if they will change him now.

Elemental is going to get off the hook due to Flash flopping stealing all the headlines lol

Pixar has suffered from a mix of other studios catching up in quality and the poor plan of distributing their films through streaming has weakened their brand. People just wait for it to come to Disney Plus anymore.

WB really dumb for announcing Andy for being the directoe for Brave and the Bold. I doubt that's happening now.

Think we can officially give the animation crown mantle right now to Universal which is dominating with Illumination + Dreamworks combo. If they somehow manage to bring Shrek back too...

Sony - Spider-verse 2.

Universal - Mario/Minions 2 (Illumination) + Puss In Boots (Dreamworks) + Trolls + Migration ($100M+ likely)

WB - DC League of Super-Pets ($90M+). Have had critical acclaim with films like The Lego Movie so the potential is there for them to become a big animation house.

Disney Animation - Encanto ($90M+) + Wish ($100M+ likely). They also have the Fox brand so could retool Ice Age. Zootopia sequel coming up too which was a critical and commercial darling which you would have thought would have come from Pixar.

Paramount - TMNT (Could see $100M+), Paw Patrol

Also, why are Trolls and Wish opening within 5 days of each other in November? What could possibly go wrong there?

Pixar definitely needs to bring its game up significantly here. I've got an idea which is a little out there but could help save two brands at once, why not have Pixar do a full Baby Yoda Star Wars animated movie and set up a larger universe there rather than all of these other SW stories no one is really asking for? I would LOVE to see a Pixar / SW collaboration.

It's fascinating watching a cultural trend die in real time.

Not to keep whining about Pixar / Disney but other glaring issues you can see from a mile away:

Why is their next movie Elio, opening within a week of Kung Fu Panda 4. Just move it away! Snow White 3 weeks later. Spider-verse 4 weeks later. Does March need 4 movies in 5 weeks all catering to family audiences? Have we not learned anything?

Watch Garfield outgross Elio in the end which has Memorial weekend.

Also, Mufasa TLK prequel and DM4 are opening within 2 days of each other in July? What could possibly go wrong there for Disney?!

Meanwhile, Sonic has Christmas 2024 all to itself for family audiences? 4 family movies in March 3 of which are animated?!

On the very positive side they got an A Cinemascore so if it can somehow leg it out, especially possible now with an open market they could redeem themselves.

When was the last time 2 high profile 200m tent poles completely bombed on the same weekend? Has there ever been a weekend that will send a message to Hollywood like this one?

I love the 3rd message of the weekend which will likely get less attention but is significant, art house movies are alive and well! Asteroid City may have the best PTA since 2019's Parasite. Also the best PTA for a movie in 5+ theaters in 28 years since Pocahontas's $448,285 in 1995 (unadjusted).

Past Lives had a great expansion as well from tripling its theaters.

A movie playing in 6 theaters with a $25M budget is the winner of a weekend with 2 $200M budgeted movies likely backed by marketing campaigns of $50-100M.

An asteroid took out the box office titans with a flash and left them burnt out.

After everything we've been through, Flash is gonna open to less than $60M? Are you fucking kidding me? At least Shazam bombing was really funny. This is just infuriating.

And these two flopparoos giving Across the Spiderverse another big drop just makes me more upset. I almost want to run back in time and stop them from being released .... but the consequences could be dire.

200 million budget for Elemental?

This won't even be close.

The Flash opening under Transformers boggles the mind.