The Flash: One Week to Go Before it Hits Theaters--as its Box Office Gross Forecast Keeps on Falling

Not too long ago the hype for The Flash was extreme in what was truly a worthy performance on the part of an entertainment press in full claqueur mode.

One may have wondered, however, whether the public was actually responding to all of the claquing on the movie's behalf.

The early box office tracking suggested that they did not. Still, the $280-$375 million Boxoffice Pro predicted as the film's final gross back in the middle of May, while not earth-shattering, at least looked respectable by the standards of a DC Extended Universe (DCEU) "burning off its final episodes."

And things could get better. After all, the critics might get behind the film, and help push it back on the road to box office glory.

Alas, things didn't get better, the projection slipping pretty quickly in the following weeks, and, in contrast with what might have been expected from the breathless hype of earlier, the critics not coming to the movie's rescue. Getting their say in recent days the Rotten Tomatoes score for the film stands at 72 percent--not exactly an overwhelming vote of confidence from those folks paid to "rate movies from good to excellent," with "good" what the critics rate movies when they don't like them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the Boxoffice Pro forecast made one week before the film's release, with the range of the film's overall run now down to $176-$282 million, works out to the floor and ceiling for the film's run in North America alone having fallen by $100 million in a mere three weeks, over a quarter of the take discussed just three weeks ago that some already regarded as a disappointment.

Putting this into terms of other movies, the film's doing well would, far from making it the crowning glory of the DCEU and the Epoch of Superhero Films in which we live that the hype promised, have it doing just a little bit better than Ant-Man 2 (about $260 million in April 2023 dollars), while at the low end its backers would be left wishing it only did as well as Ant-Man 3 (its $214 million standing about a fifth higher than the floor now predicted for the movie).

Going by what is said about the film itself, rather than the tracking data, I expect that the movie will find a fan base--relatively hardcore superhero movie fans responsive to the "trippy" premise, the brisk and action-packed narrative, the nostalgic button-pushing. But the general audience will be less impressed, finding it to be rather than the greatest of superhero films, at best an interesting one, or just passable, or maybe annoying and wearying, as the case might be--the kind of situation that leaves a movie a commercial disappointment, even as it, perhaps, wins a cult following over time.