How Will Blue Beetle Do? (A Note on the Boxoffice Pro's Tracking)

These days even the biggest movies from the bigger franchises are having a tough time getting audiences to the theaters--and smaller movies having a tougher time still. Thus Guardians of the Galaxy 3 disappoints (finishing up a fifth down from the gross of Guardians of the Galaxy 2 when we adjust for inflation), while Shazam 2 craters (this $100 million+ DCEU superhero movie finishing with $134 million taken in globally).

Blue Beetle was an originally straight-to-streaming release "upgraded" with a bigger budget in the wake of its studio's declining interest in costly streaming projects that saw them decide to bury a nearly complete Batgirl film rather than give it the same treatment.

Still, from the standpoint of resources invested and name recognition the movie was more Shazam than Guardians of the Galaxy (never mind Spider-Man).

All the same, catching Blue Beetle's trailer a while back I thought it at least promised a fast, flashy, fun summer movie. (Indeed, it made a better impression that way than the contemporaneous Captain Marvel 2 trailer.)

Was it possible that Blue Beetle would defy the odds? Not necessarily becoming a billion-dollar hit, but still being a meaningful success on a smaller scale?

Alas, to go by Boxoffice Pro's projection Blue Beetle will be lucky to do as well as Shazam! Fury of the Gods. Their analyst Shawn Robbins anticipates a $12-$17 million opening on the way to a $27-$55 million gross at the end of its domestic run.

Shazam 2, by contrast, opened with $30 million--far above the high end of the range projected for Blue Beetle--on its way to a $58 million gross even after its collapse in the second weekend.

Of course, Blue Beetle will not actually hit theaters for four weeks, and a lot can change in that period. We have seen many a movie's tracking-based prospects wither in that time frame (in fact this has happened again and again this year, perhaps most pointedly The Flash), but sometimes their prospects improve--with this weekend's Barbie an excellent example. (A month ago Boxoffice Pro was thinking the movie's first three days might take in as little as $55 million. Now the range they have in mind is two-and-a-half to three times that, $140-$175 million.) Still, whether or not the film lives up to this promise the more likely outcome is its confirming the impressions so many of superhero fatigue and the commercial pointlessness of putting out smaller films of that kind.

Expect an update on that during the coming weeks.