Is The Flash Already Looking Like a Flop? (An Update on the Projected Opening Weekend Gross for DCEU's The Flash)

A little over a week ago Boxoffice Pro reported that, based on its tracking, the upcoming DC Extended Universe (DCEU) film The Flash (due out June 16) was headed for a $115-$140 million domestic gross on its opening weekend.

Yesterday, when the publication released its next long-range tracking forecast it appeared the range had been revised downward. The top end of the range has not shifted by much--down only to $135 million--but the forecasters shifted the bottom end of the range downward by a rough quarter ($30 million), to a "mere" $85 million.

The revision predictably extends to the film's overall run, with the bottom end of the range falling from $280 million to $208 million (even as the high end of the range slipped only slightly, from $375 to $362 million).

In short, the floor fell dramatically.

Meanwhile The Hollywood Reporter has reported that the movie could now be expected to take in just $70 million on opening weekend.

This is far from consistent with the media's recent bullishness about the movie--and it would seem to indicate that the press is a lot more excited about the movie than he public is, its breathless hyping of the movie failing to catch on.

Of course, one may imagine that the weak debut will be followed by a positive reaction, and more robust ticket sales, in the following weeks. After all, good holds have partially saved Guardians of the Galaxy 3 from the fate some feared just a little while ago. Still, it is not a good sign, and I find myself looking again at the prediction I made in response to the first Boxoffice Pro projection, suggesting $700-$850 million as the plausible range for the film's global gross. If the movie opens to $70 million, if it does better than that but fails to interest the broader audience that stayed home opening weekend, we might see the movie fall far short of the $200 million Boxoffice Pro over its domestic run. Should the movie, like Aquaman, make 70 percent of its money overseas, that would leave it well short of the $700 million mark, while if it merely matched its domestic take internationally it might even end up under $400 million.

This would mean that the highly touted "best superhero movie ever" (a very, very big claim to make in superhero-saturated 2023) would make Ant-Man 3 look like a winner by comparison.

The result is that the film's trajectory in the weeks ahead will be interesting--though hopefully not more interesting than the movie itself (in which case this movie really will be in trouble).

Of "Armchair Movie Executives": Some Thoughts

Not long ago I read an article (which I refrain from naming or linking) remarking--frankly, lamenting--what its author saw as the transformation of the moviegoing public--of people who have no personal stake in how films do whatsoever--into "armchair movie executives," endlessly gabbing about the business of movies, to the point of overshadowing the movies themselves, while also expressing befuddlement at the development.

I think his sense of this was exaggerated. I suspect that those who pay much attention to what movies cost and make are a small minority--but it so happens that small minorities tend to be a lot more noticeable than silent majorities, here as in other areas of life, and the Internet has permitted them to be much more noticeable indeed. I also suspect that those who are interested mostly pay attention to just a very small proportion of the films that are produced. (Those who do care what movies make are much more concerned with blockbusters than small dramas such as Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, and with some blockbusters rather than others--the evidence, apparently, that they care much more about how the Marvel superhero films will do than, for example, how Fast X will do.)

Still, I do think that, all things considered, more people are paying attention, and individually many of them are paying more attention, than before--and that the author of the piece in question was right when he suggested that easy access to the relevant data played its part. But this only permitted it to happen, rather than compelling the armchair executives to use the data.

It also seems that the situation is substantially of Hollywood's creation, specifically how it makes and markets films these days.

If it appalled the author of the article in question that the public speaks of "franchises," that is because just about every big movie is a franchise movie now--as was not the case before, with key to the plan cashing in on name recognition, and relentless invidious comparison of the new with the old. "Didn't you just hate that?" they'd say in that gratingly wheedling way as they run down that older film while trying to talk up the new. Many of us would say, "No, we didn't hate it," but they did raise the issue all the same, and thus induced us to think about the relationship of one to the other.

If more people know more of the numbers, that is because the studios' claqueurs are always tossing them about, with reports of big salaries, big budgets, big grosses intended to make them think "This is something special. This is something I have to see," to the point of using a movie's being a hit, or even just having the makings of a hit, to make more people go see it, just like the practice of persuading people to buy books by telling them they are bestsellers--which, unavoidably, makes them attentive to the matter of what is selling.

Of course, some people are more responsive to all this than others. Those who belong to a particular "fandom," for example, tend to be interested in everything to do with the work of which they are fans, and are famously attentive to history and detail--with this not necessarily excluding the economics of the matter--which tends to be a factor in the heightened interest in them, all as Hollywood is making so many more movies that come with a fandom attached (as with its superhero comics-based films).

It also matters a great deal that they so often offend those fans--who are so inclined to seize on the now more available than ever evidence to support their arguments that what they did not like, no one else did, either.

There are also those who have had more than a purely "fan" interest--for example, anyone who has ever fancied themselves writing a screenplay, maybe studied up on it a bit, maybe read the trade publications in the hope of learning something. The number of such persons relative to those who actually make a living in Hollywood is not small, and they do not all live in the Los Angeles area by any means. It is quite possible to gain an interest in the financial performance of films this way. (Indeed, even before the Internet you could read Variety at your local library, and be presented with a wealth of financial minutiae.) And even if such interest was never very serious or very lengthy one does not necessarily give it up. Quite the contrary, the fantasy of being in Hollywood can play its part here, the whiff of "insider information" another way the publicists have of getting a hold of the audience's imagination as it makes its sales pitch.

And there are also the factors that let all this loom larger next to the interest of other sides of film and their interest. Hollywood, notably, has long relied on the "star" system to interest the public in movies--but the star system has long been in decline, which means that other ways of catching people's interest more conspicuous. There are times when Hollywood has seemed exciting artistically--and others where it has not, with our period falling into the latter category, making it the easier for the economics to overshadow the art. (Indeed, film critic David Walsh, no worshiper of high film grosses or lover of gossip for gossip's sake, who is at least as attuned to cinema as art as any critic working today, titled his review of Marvel's Black Widow "Black Widow: The Surrounding Controversies are More Interesting and Revealing Than the Film.")

Those who would lament the decline of interest in film as an art form--I would like to make it clear that they have my sympathies--would therefore do better to see in the proliferation of armchair movie executives not the problem, but only a symptom.

The '90s Feature Film-Based-on-an-Old-TV-Show Craze

There were adaptations of old TV shows into films before the 1990s--as in the late 1970s when, amid the Hollywood studio executives being stunned by the success of the George Lucas project they had all sneeringly rejected, Paramount made its contribution to the stream with a big-screen version of Star Trek that proved a major hit and launched a screen series that has continued down to the present, or , or Twilight Zone: The Movie, or the ironic Dan Aykroyd-Tom Hanks Dragnet, or the un-ironic Brian De Palma The Untouchables.

There have certainly been such adaptations since the '90s--as with the decisions to make big-screen versions of The Equalizer, or The Man From U.N.C.L.E., or ChiPs.

However, such efforts seem to have been especially numerous in the '90s (and the years immediately afterward, up to say about 2005, which given how long such projects take to come to fruition, can be thought of as a natural extension of them). Thus did we see the period produce hits out of '60s and '70s-era television shows like The Addams Family, The Fugitive, Maverick, Mission: Impossible and Charlie's Angels, and S.W.A.T., and Starsky & Hutch, with live-action adaptations of The Flintstones and George of the Jungle and Scooby-Doo likewise successes, as Lost in Space and Wild Wild West, if not quite the hits some hoped for, still sold a lot of tickets, and The Brady Bunch Movie did well enough to rate a sequel of its own. However, the list gets positively staggering when we remember the ones that were less well-received--like the big screen Leave it to Beaver, or Sgt. Bilko, or The Avengers (those other Avengers), or The Mod Squad, or The Honeymooners.

There simply did not seem as much enthusiasm for this afterward, this fashion waning just like the brief '90s boom in the Western (Dances With Wolves, Unforgiven) and other kinds of period pieces (Braveheart, Titanic, all that "Greatest Generation"-singing World War II stuff).

I am not sure that the flops came to matter more to Hollywood decision-makers than the successes. Rather, in an important moment in the history of the evolution of "high concept," became more focused in its approach to this game, Hollywood zeroing in on the sci-fi action-adventure genre as the big moneymaker; while being a little more attentive to the fact that a movie version of an old TV show has little high concept cachet if their audience has never heard of that show, as is now increasingly likely with ever-exploding electronic entertainment options meaning that reruns of old TV shows are not the staple of people's pop cultural diets they used to be. Thus Hollywood enthusiastically made big movies out of shows like The Transformers and G.I. Joe (and even the Chipmunks and Smurfs), but these decision-makers became more cautious when looking at dramatic fare, to say nothing of those sitcoms that even TVLand and Nick at Nite stopped running ages ago. Were their caution perfect there would never have been, for example, Dax Shepard's ChiPs, or Elizabeth Banks' Charlie's Angels. But all the same, such things are rarities now--while confirming the change is the way that yesteryear's big screen hits, rather than being remade for the big screen, are now made over into small screen TV shows. Hence Fatal Attraction is now a show on streaming--while if we ever get a new edition of Cheers or Seinfeld (I very much hope that we don't, but to all evidences the typical Hollywood Suit is as shameless as he is stupid) it will probably be coming to your streaming service, rather than to a theater near you.

The James Bond Franchise's Trajectory and the Marvel Cinematic Universe

With Phase Three's routinization of billion-dollar grosses (and $5 billion off just the two-part Avengers battle with Thanos!) the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) recently represented the epitome of what a popular franchise could achieve at the box office. (Snobs snickered about "Marvel envy" as they watched Warner Bros., Universal and others try to have similar success, but there were excellent reasons for the envy, from a business standpoint at least.)

Of course, no reasonable person could expect Phase Three-caliber success to go on forever, any more than any other comparable pop cultural sensation (or business success) can go on forever. The pandemic probably did quicken the end of the good times (my own prediction in 2019 was that Black Widow was 2020's surest bet for a billion dollar gross, and I think it probably would have grossed a billion in today's dollars if it had not been for the pandemic), but all the same Phase Four was pretty anti-climactic after that the big Avengers two-parter, while Phase Five has yet to show much sign of restoring "Marvel supremacy." Indeed, I wonder if there is not already a rush to end it and get on with Phase Six--though even allowing for the prospect of recovery getting the MCU's box office draw back to its Phase Three level is a tall order, with nothing quite like the boom years of 2016-2019 to be seen again (because, commercially at least, they really were that spectacular), and that those years will continue to be recognizable as Marvel's commercial peak.

Of course, that fact does not spell the end of the MCU by any means, with the James Bond series--because this was not only the first of the high-concept action-adventure blockbusters as we now know them, but because having run so long it has probably already gone where the other franchises eventually will (as consideration of the handling of Star Wars, for example, demonstrates)--a useful point of reference here. As it happened the Bond series peaked in the mid-1960s, with Thunderball and You Only Live Twice, after which there was more caution in laying out the money, because grosses were not what they had been (Twice, the highest-cost film made to date, and the first to bring in less than its predecessor, such that points of comparison afterward would be few). But the franchise went on cranking out new Bond films. For a half century, and counting.

It is a reminder that a series can go on for a very long time indeed after ticket sales slip. Still, the Bond series did so in a different time, when the economics of filmmaking were different, and the market was different. Through the late '60s, and well into the '70s, there was nothing quite like them from the standpoint of action-adventure spectacle, which probably helped a great deal in their lingering on. Moreover, if when such competition arrived the series suffered for it (the '80s, certainly, a low point for the series commercially, especially but not just in the U.S.), there was even in the '90s more room for the franchise to rally than it enjoys today. Moreover, after a mere four films, and a quashed attempt at a spin-off (in the unmade Jinx Johnson adventures), the producers thought a reboot in order--which was to see a mere five films cranked out between 2002 and the present, with the disappointing response to the last of those films giving the producers pause about a next attempt likely to be many more years off.

It is all a far cry from the MCU's cranking out three $200 million+ headline movies year in, year out in the expectation of takers, with a vast patchwork of tie-ins also going (as in the streaming TV series). Still, for the time being the movies, if not pulling in what they used to do, are among the more profitable films around, with Doctor Strange 2 #4, Black Panther #2 and Thor 4 #9 on Deadline's list of money-makers last year (even the last delivering a cash-on-cash return of over $100 million), which would seem quite enough to have the other studios still suffering from "Marvel envy." The issue, though, is how long the MCU's films can go on doing that well, with the trend of the returns on an immense investment so evidently downward--and I would add, more at issue than the fate of this one franchise. I cannot say for certain just how much "superhero fatigue" is out there (I actually expected it to have finished the wave of superhero films long before this point), but it seems to me that the broader pattern of blockbuster filmmaking may well be in trouble--like the old-style Hollywood musical in the late '60s. If that proves to be the case then the MCU's problems will be of a nature far, far more fundamental than the mismanagement or overexploitation of a single franchise.

"The Hollywood Franchise in Winter"; or, "The Studios Have Run Every Franchise into the Ground!"

A little while ago it occurred to me that it was entirely possible that no live-action movie this summer, or this year, will break the $1 billion barrier (a failure the more glaring as at least a half dozen such films managed the feat in 2019, at a time when a dollar was worth $1.17 today). This is not for lack of big franchise films of the kind that we are endlessly reminded are just about all that gets people to the theater these days--but because the films from which the franchises hail are long past their best days. I have written a lot here about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) lately, but it would be unfair to treat it as unique in this. The truth is that, for all the intensity of its prolonged exploitation, they're still, after hitting truly extraordinary highs, doing better than all their rivals, as one is reminded looking at the offerings of the summer of 2023, be it the already officially dead DC Extended Universe, the Fast and Furious, the Transformers, Mission: Impossible, etc., etc.--they are all a decade old or older (in most cases, much older), with many, many entries behind them. (Fast and Furious 10? Seriously? Transformers 6? Or is it 7? Back to the Future II's joke about Jaws 15 looks less and less like satire and more like prognostication all the time.)

Of course, that raises the question of why this is the case--why the studios are so determined to feed the public not only installments in booming franchises, but increasingly risky offerings from increasingly aged and run-down film franchises. There is an undeniable disinterest on their part in doing so that bespeaks their management's laziness, cowardice or stupidity, to the point of being eager to throw hundreds of millions away on sequels no one asked for. (Thus did we get a Terminator 6.) Meanwhile, where they have been willing to make the attempt, they have displayed extraordinary incompetence. (Would you believe that Will Smith's After Earth was supposed to launch a cinematic universe?)

Yet even fully acknowledging the stupidity and incompetence involved one has to admit that the Suits have not been given so much to work with as they might have, depriving them of material that had some possibility of helping inject some freshness into their production.

Consider, for example, publishing. When did we last see a literary blockbuster really suitable for their purposes? The YA fantasy/sci-fi boom of the late '90s and early 21st century gave us such colossi as Harry Potter, Twilight, the Hunger Games. But that was a long time ago, such that the studios have gone on trying to exploit them (with the awkward Fantastic Beasts spin-off of Harry Potter, with a Hunger Games prequel coming your way this year) to questionable result.

TV? Alas, TV is these days living off of what it can derive from, besides its past (with remake after remake after remake after revival of old TV shows), film, taking more than giving (thus are films of yesteryear that are not big action blockbusters endlessly remade for the small screen, like Fatal Attraction). Meanwhile the market is ever more fragmented, stuff that would bring a general audience to the theater elusive--which is why we still traffic in references to the Simpsons and Seinfeld and Star Trek all these years later, because that is the only thing those of us of a certain generation have seen that we can expect others to recognize. This means not only a lack of ready-made franchises they can turn into the next Mission: Impossible or Transformers, but a smaller chance of new ideas in a more general or abstract way gaining any traction.

The result is that, while by no means letting the folks in Hollywood off the hook for their failure, their failure has been a matter of a broader failure on the part of a generally stagnant pop culture industry in which the technological and commercial INNOVATION on display ("How do we squeeze the customer for a few more pennies?") have far outstripped the creativity of the "content" that is their raison d'etre.

Indiana Jones 5 and Top Gun 2: Revisiting the Comparison

The expectation some have that Indiana Jones 5 will play like Top Gun 2--dominating its summer's box office with a bigger-than-expected opening, followed by stronger-than-expected legs leading to a gross towering over those of its rivals--has been much discussed in the press on account of the two films both being revivals of major '80s-era "feel good" hits with the kind of stars "Hollywood doesn't make anymore" that even seem comparable in getting a big screening at Cannes prior to their worldwide release.

There has, of course, been less comment, or even acknowledgment, of the undeniable differences in the circumstances of their release. The Rah-Rah attitude the media took toward Top Gun 2 meant that pretty much no one talked about the advantage it derived from having relatively little box office competition from other action-oriented blockbusters; or the Rah-Rah attitude itself, which is to say, the media's cheerleading for the movie.

It was always clear that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny would not have such a clear run at the box office--the summer of 2023 packed with big movies (even if audience enthusiasm for the particular films may be shaky in this era of numerous aged, run-down franchises). Now, in the wake of the premiere at Cannes it seems clear that the movie will not have the media cheerleading for it. (Indiana Jones 5's Rotten Tomatoes was score was, in fact, "rotten"--a mere 50 percent as of Friday, as against the 77 percent that even the not-so-well-received Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull managed.)

This matters all the more because Indiana Jones 5 probably needed critical backing more than Top Gun 2 did. Certainly I remarked the headwinds facing that blockbuster--but I suppose my expectation was that the audience's reception would, if not positive, incline more toward disinterest than dislike. In the case of Indiana Jones 5 dislike seemed a real danger given the skepticism in many quarters about such a project from the start--with this exacerbated by the fact that, in contrast with the do-over of Top Gun that gave its target audience more of what it liked the first time, and was received by it as a "feel good" movie, Indiana Jones 5 looks like the opposite. Departing in significant ways from its predecessors (structurally, aesthetically, etc.), it would seem that those who had doubts about the necessity or desirability of a fifth film, made under Disney management, starring an octogenarian Harrison Ford, helmed by Logan director James Mangold, and costarring Phoebe Waller-Bridge, will, on reading the reviews available now at least, feel they were entirely right to be doubtful. Indeed, while the analogy that occurred to me a few days ago was between Indiana Jones 5 and Daniel Craig-era James Bond 5, No Time to Die, especially in the wake of some of what I have seen on the Internet, I would not rule out a The Last Jedi-level Internet backlash against the film--with all that implies for how the film will perform at the box office, and general feeling toward the individuals and firms involved.

Can the MCU Reverse the Erosion of its Audience?

Guardians of the Galaxy 3 had a disappointing opening weekend, but afterward had surprisingly strong holds for a blockbuster threequel (and still more, for a pandemic-era MCU release with a soft initial reception) given such films tendency to have their grosses very "front-loaded."

A plausible reading of the situation is that audiences coming to the movie are genuinely liking what they are seeing--maybe more than anything the MCU has offered them since Spider-Man: No Way Home (with this supported by the 94 percent audience score I see on Rotten Tomatoes).

Of course, the positive reaction goes only so far. Even at my most optimistic I see the film making a final sum closer to $800 million than $900 million--a far cry from the $1 billion+ Guardians of the Galaxy 2 earned in real terms, let alone the $1.2 billion Screen Rant anticipated for the film back in January, which would justify a view of the film as some proof that "The MCU is back!"*

All the same, this does raise the question of whether the MCU can reverse the evident erosion of its audience--and more importantly, do it with the existing slate of projects (as, should the movies already headed their way flop, they will make the task harder for its successors).

What are your thoughts, readers?

Screen Rant has since offered the more modest (but still bullish) prediction that the movie "could still grow its box office to at least $1 billion throughout the summer."

Can Guardians of the Galaxy 3 Still Break the Billion-Dollar Barrier This Summer?

Back in January Screen Rant offered the very bullish prediction that Guardians of the Galaxy 3 would gross $1.2 billion at the box office.

Of course, any such expectation has long since faded, and the web site now suggests instead that the movie might yet break the billion-dollar barrier, at best--which if not quite as good would leave it at least matching the gross of the preceding film in the series in real, inflation-adjusted terms, which is pretty good for a sequel, and especially an MCU movie these days (given their recent trend of sharply declining grosses).

At this point I have already ruled out what a while back looked like the worst-case scenario (an Ant-Man 3-like collapse for the film at the box office, leaving it with a take of under $600 million). But what about this best-case scenario?

Consider what it would require. Even with Guardians of the Galaxy 3 doing relatively better abroad than its predecessors (so far making not 55 but 60 percent of its money internationally) its getting to a $1 billion at this rate would require it to make over $400 million domestically. This would require it to make about three-and-a-half times what it did in its opening three days ($118 million) through the overall run. This would not require Top Gun-like legs, but still very strong legs indeed--considerably stronger than those which have already brought some relief to those hoping the movie would do well after a less-than-hoped-for opening weekend.

Should the film's grosses hold up as they have this past week from the prior week the movie would top out around $330 million--pretty well short of the mark, with even $350 million optimistic. The result is that, unless the overseas earnings get even stronger in some unforeseeable way (the movie came out pretty much everywhere in early May--China included--so no one's waiting on any big markets) this by itself suffices to make that performance unlikely. Indeed, as yet I think not just $1 billion but even $900 million likely to prove out of reach.

Of course, the upcoming Memorial Day weekend will tell us more about the prospects of this film--but I expect it to be more telling still about Fast X, and the weekend's near-certain winner by a long way, the live-action remake of the 1989 film that almost singlehandedly brought animation back to the top of the box office, The Little Mermaid.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3: Revisiting the Ant-Man 3 Comparison

While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has, since the climax of Phase Three, seen a nearly unbroken series of disappointments in various degree, Ant-Man 3's underperformance was of particular concern. After all, the earlier installments in particular were released when the pandemic had the global box office way down from the historical norm--such that the meaning of the earnings of Black Widow, The Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was ambiguous, while Dr. Strange 2, if not all that had been hoped for given the groundwork laid by the colossally successful Spider-Man: No Way Home and its opening-of-the-summer release, still outdid the first Dr. Strange as it took in, if not a billion dollars, then also not so much less. Subsequently, if in current terms Thor 4 did poorly next to its predecessor Thor 3 (taking in $760 million, against the $854 million Thor 3 made in 2017, and the $1 billion+ it made in 2022 dollars) it was an exceptional fourth installment in its series; while Black Panther 2, if seeing a worse drop (Black Panther 2 made just half what the original did in real, inflation-adjusted terms) was a follow-up to a particularly colossal hit that was in some ways unrepeatable (as a "first" held to be of political significance), and suffered from the loss of the original's star.

There were no such excuses for Ant-Man 3, given a relatively easy February release (as compared with the summertime box office its two predecessors had to contend with), and boosted with the interest of its being the opening act of Phase Five, all as the preceding films did not raise the bar all that high (Ant-Man 2 taking in not much over $600 million globally). However, its real terms gross ended up over a third down from Ant-Man 3's none-too-stellar take ($476 million grossed to date, against the $740-$750 million Ant-Man 2 made in 2023 dollars).

All of this seemed to bode poorly for Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and indeed, after its opening weekend I speculated here about what Guardians would make if it followed an Ant-Man 3-like trajectory from that point on (producing estimates of a domestic gross under $250 million, and a global box office of possibly under $600 million).

As it happened, the films ended up performing very differently. Ant-Man 3 had what seemed a decent opening weekend domestically, and then saw its grosses fall hard (70 percent from the first weekend to the second), while its international gross suffered even worse. (In the end, in inflation-adjusted terms, Ant-Man 3 made about a sixth less domestically than Ant-Man 3, while its international gross fell almost half.) By contrast Guardians of the Galaxy 3 had a disappointing opening weekend, followed by surprisingly strong second and third weekend holds, quickly mooting the worst case scenario (the movie's domestic gross is already well past $250 million now); while in relative terms it did better overseas (producing a 60/40 international/domestic split, versus the 55/45 split seen with Guardians of the Galaxy 2).*

The strong legs in the domestic market, and the relatively robust international performance, will mean that Guardians of the Galaxy 3 will, gross-wise, hold up relatively better to the preceding film in its series than Ant-Man 3 did. Indeed, I suspect its final, inflation-adjusted gross will be a fifth or less down from what the second installment did (with this split a bit differently, the movie about three-tenths down in the domestic market, and just a tenth down internationally, from that mark).

Still, if this is grounds for a sigh of relief on the part of Guardians' backers (a gross of $800 million+ is a lot better than <$600 million), it confirms the general downward trend in the grosses, and profitability, of the MCU, which may be expected to continue rather than reverse (even as some films do better than others). This certainly seems the case with Captain Marvel 2, like Black Panther 2 a follow-up to a film whose success may be unrepeatable (as a politically significant "first," and having hit theaters mere weeks before the highly anticipated Avengers: Endgame), presaging a particularly severe drop, which may be worsened by the headwinds it faces (which I have written enough about previously to not bother belaboring here)--such that I would think it lucky to do as well as Guardians, with all that implies for the MCU's fortunes.

* The 12 days following Ant-Man 3's opening weekend saw it boost its initial three-day gross a mere 76 percent in the domestic market (from $106 to $187 million). By contrast Guardians of the Galaxy 3 increased its gross over its opening weekend take by a much better 125 percent over the same period (from $118 to $267 million, already beating out Ant-Man 3's final domestic take by $50 million, with a good deal more to come).

Guardians of the Galaxy 3's Third Weekend: How Did it Do at the Box Office? (Oh, and What About That Fast X?)

Guardians of the Galaxy 3's third weekend performance has been in line with last week's predictions--another good hold enabling the movie to take in another $30 million at the domestic box office, raising its total here to $267 million. Meanwhile the movie's global gross is about $659 million according to the current estimate.

Thus the pattern evident last week remains evident now: after what seemed to many a weak opening, reasonably strong legs that compensated for it at home, while relative to the past films in the series Guardians of the Galaxy 3 has benefited from a slightly higher intake of money internationally (more like 60 percent than 55-57 percent of its money coming from foreign markets thus far).

At this point the movie is all but certain to finish up north of $300 million domestically, and $700 million globally--and north even of the $750 million I had thought it would not get much past. Indeed, my prior prediction of something around $330 million domestically and $825 million globally still seems to me reasonably optimistic.

A pleasant surprise after the plummeting expectations in the weeks preceding the movie's release, and the opening weekend (which had me speculating about Ant-Man 3-based worst-case scenarios of a sub-$600 million global take, now quite moot) what I said earlier about that performance also seems true. If a better outcome relative to its predecessors than other recent Marvel releases have seen it is still something of a comedown from the last two, especially when we adjust the figures for inflation--the two Guardians of the Galaxy films $1 billion hits in 2023 dollars, a mark of which its 2023 follow-up will almost certainly fall well short. Accordingly those hoping to see the Marvel Cinematic Universe collapse at the box office may not be able to gloat the way they might have thought a couple of weeks ago--but at the same time the mega-franchise's backers and supporters are reminded that they have no grounds for complacency, that profits are falling for a now aging franchise showing signs of weariness, even as, with Phase Five less than inspiring, the studio management cries "To Phase Six. And beyond!"

The story does not seem dissimilar for Fast X. The movie took in $67 million at the North American box office--near the upper end of the range predicted for it, but no better than that--while doing better overseas, with an impressive $320 million gross. Thus far I see no reason to change my prediction (a North American take in the $160-$175 million range, a global take in the vicinity of $800 million).

Meanwhile The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which on top of an extraordinary debut ($225 million racked up in its first six days) has shown extraordinary staying power at the box office, has continued to do so by taking in another $10 million to remain at #3 in its seventh weekend--confirming the expectations that this will be Chris Pratt's highest-grossing movie this year, and likely exceed the earnings of any live-action movie this year (with, in the wake of Indiana Jones 5's always uncertain and perhaps dimming prospects, a real possibility that none of these will break the $1 billion barrier Mario and friends broke so easily and quickly).

Is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Going to Be the No Time to Die of the Indiana Jones Series?

The kind of adventure Indiana Jones represented when he first appeared, was, like Star Wars, a throwback to adventure serials and World War II movies in a time when people who grew up on the stuff were a significant demographic--and imbued with a nostalgia for that content as strong as the nostalgia for the '50s, the '60s, the '70s, the '80s were to be in later decades. (Certainly reading through the classics of spy fiction I was struck again and again by how much World War II stuff we got in the 1970s.)

There was less of that about in subsequent decades, in which Indiana Jones-type period adventure looked more anomalous--in part because the fashion for such adventure Indiana Jones started proved a lot less durable than the fashionability for outer space and sci-fi action-adventure Star Wars started (which has since had ups and downs, but never really disappeared), while in 1989 the heroes literally riding off into the sunset, such that Indy was no longer around to keep propping it up the way new Star Wars films have. Indeed, anyone much under forty is unlikely to have seen more than one Indiana Jones film in the theater, if that, with that particular film unprepossessing. (It does not seem irrelevant here that the young are especially tough sells on period pieces these days.)

None of that takes anything away from the status of the prior Indiana Jones films, and especially the first three, as classics of the action-adventure form that did much to establish the genre as we know it, and continue to enjoy a good deal of affection from fans. But as the James Bond films that were a significant inspiration for Indiana Jones demonstrate, past glories of this kind are a poor basis indeed for keeping a franchise going from hit to hit, and it is not for nothing that doubts abound about how the audience will take this latest installment in the franchise. Indeed, it seems possible that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will be to the saga what No Time to Die has been to the rebooted James Bond film--a belated fifth installment by a new director that closed the saga on a less than triumphant note from the perspectives of box office, critics and fans alike, as the demographics of the audience affirm that the long-declining franchise's audience has aged right along with it rather than replenishing itself by winning new fans.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny's Cannes Debut (Need We Revise the Box Office Prediction for Indiana Jones 5?)

These past few days I have had (as writer about this summer's films for this blog, at least) my attention on Guardians of the Galaxy 3's third weekend, Fast X's debut, and the Boxoffice Pro forecast for The Flash.

Indiana Jones 5's Cannes world premiere slipped my mind.

But it did happen. And the first reviews are out.

When I made my prediction for how Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (aka Indiana Jones 5) would do at the box office I went by what the prior films in the series made, the downward trend in their domestic grosses, the proportion of domestic to foreign gross. On that basis I anticipated a domestic gross of perhaps $400 million, matched by another $600 million internationally for a $1 billion take. This was about a fifth down from the series' peak with Raiders of the Lost Ark, so I set that movie's gross (about $1.25 billion in today's terms) as an upper end to the plausible range, and going by the same "margin of error," suggested $750 million as the range's bottom end

I also guessed that the movie's making under $1 billion was more likely than its making more than $1 billion because the film seemed to face a lot of headwinds (as an aged franchise with an aged audience that may be a tough sell to younger folks less attached to it and leerier of period pieces; cynicism about a fifth Jones film, a new director, Lucasfilm under Disney management; unattraction to the particular choice of theme, setting, personnel attached, be it having the director of Logan do the movie, or including Phoebe Waller-Bridge; etc.). Indeed, the film had enough against it that I did not rule out a Solo-like collapse (you know, what happened the last time a character Harrison Ford played in earlier years had a Lucasfilm adventure with Ms. Waller-Bridge).

Considering all this it seems worth returning to the point of comparison that Top Gun 2 has been for many of the more optimistic watchers of this film's prospects. While so far as I can tell the entertainment press prefers to ignore the fact in favor of a Rah-rah attitude toward the Top Gun sequel's success at the American box office, that movie succeeded as well as it did because it had comparatively slight box office competition in the summer of 2022; and the cheerleading of that media behind it.

Indiana Jones 5, like every other movie out this summer, was never going to have the kind of comparatively open field Top Gun 2 did. Now we also see that it does not have the press cheerleading for it. The movie's Rotten Tomatoes scores stands at a franchise low--very low--50 percent, a fact which seems the more ominous given that this was a movie that, given its shaky appeal, really needed that; and that, certainly to go by what I saw for the immediately preceding film in the series Indiana Jones 4 (the critics' score was a "fresh" 77 percent, the audience score a "rotten" 53 percent), the critics may be far kinder to the film than the general public.

Moreover, the specific remarks the critics offer regarding the film in many cases specifically confirm what many feared about the movie--that it is an unnecessary and mediocre, "box-ticking" addition to the saga, heavily reliant on the audience's fondness for its predecessors, even as it misses what people actually love about them, and even undermines them in what Nicholas Barber's review for the BBC called not just a movie that feels like "fan fiction [or] a tie-in video game," but a "gloomy and depressing" close to the series. (I might add that just as Mr. Barber's remarks would seem to confirm those who were skeptical of the director of Logan doing a movie about Indiana Jones in old age, those who groaned at the thought of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's involvement in the project are also likely to feel they were right to do so.)

So yes: even if some would still have us believe Indy's next adventure could play like Top Gun 2, if I was thinking $750 million-$1 billion was more likely than $1 billion+ back at the start of April (with Solo-like collapse, if not likely not wholly ruled out) my assessment leans still more heavily in that direction (as I upgrade even the prospect of Solo-like collapse, still unlikely, but less unlikely-looking than before these reports).

And I am not expecting that to change--at least, in the upward direction.

Still, we will see what Boxoffice Pro has to say about the opening weekend in response to the first evidence of the public's actual willingness to buy a ticket.

Is The Flash Going to Be the DCEU's Skyfall?

There is a tedious predictability to the marketing of reboots--aspects of which tend to be fairly distasteful. One is the denigration of the old version of the franchise for the sake of talking up the new one.

"Didn't you just hate that?" the publicists say in that wheedling way.

Maybe some people didn't care for it. But not all of us. The whole point of the reboot, after all, is to capitalize on that earlier thing's success--which means the affection people had for it, which is also why they are taking this line. Their affection is why the brand name they are cashing in on means something, but their affection for the old version may be a barrier to their accepting a new one. The result is that to effectively exploit that affection they have to divert it--from the old thing to the new one.

Of course, this is not a permanent stance on their part. Because after all this nonsense has been used to establish the new version the franchise-runners go back to mining the old for more coin, the value of nostalgia for the old is too great a thing for them to ignore permanently.

Indeed, just a short time after trying to bury the old version to make way for the new they are apt to use the fondness people still have for the old version to prop up the new, especially when it is not doing so well.

The James Bond franchise, which as the pioneer of the high-concept mode of filmmaking generally, and the action-adventure franchise as we know it in particular, has been on the cutting edge of movie-making and marketing in the past, remains so--pioneering this particular practice.

"Didn't you just hate that?" they said about the original EON Bond films as they tried selling people on the reboot. No, we didn't all hate it. But that was the line they used in promoting the new Daniel Craig versions, and the claqueurs of the entertainment press helped sustain that narrative.

As it happened Casino Royale ended up a hit. But the response to Quantum of Solace, at least to go by the prevailing narrative, was less ebullient. Meanwhile, with MGM in financial trouble (for the umpteenth time, but not the last), the next film was put on hold as people wondered about the survival of the franchise itself. ("Is James Bond dead?" Entertainment Weekly actually asked.)

The franchise-runners were shaken--while the 50th anniversary of the Bond series was coming up fast. And so they made the most of it, making of Skyfall a 50th anniversary movie in an even bigger way than they made of the Easter egg hunt that was the 40th anniversary movie, Die Another Day. They made a big deal about evocations of Bond's past--shifting away from Bond as practically a dude who came "from the street" to go by what Vesper Lynd said in the 2006 film to making him a Scottish blueblood with baggage about his past, and more baggage from the "family dynamics" of the present. ("This time, it's personal.") They brought back the machine gun-packing Aston Martin from the '60s-era films that one would have previously thought simply did not exist in this timeline. And they had the film run with a latterday version of Q and Moneypenny and even an M who is not Sir Miles Messervy, but is at least Miles Messervy-ish, so that as the film closes the office, at least, looks a little more like the one we remember.

Basically they had gone from "Didn't you just hate that?" to "Didn't you just love that?" And if your answer was "No," their answer was "Shut up, of course you did!"

All this is inconsistent, incoherent, insulting to the intelligence--and therefore, I would think, risky. And even where the audience was accepting of the manipulation I would think such comparative minutiae would, at most, matter more to the hardcore fans of the series, not the broad moviegoing public that watches the movies casually, especially the younger members with less memory of the older films, who probably would not know Geoffrey Keen from Robert Brown from Bernard Lee (especially given how, I think, people actually watch action movies). Still, it got people talking, brought the new film a lot of positive press--and when it hit theaters, for whatever reason (correlation is not causation, but all the same, the correlation is pretty striking), the movie overperformed, and massively. The prior two Bond films had made about $600 million each globally--Skyfall over $1.1 billion, which is to say almost as much as the prior two films combined. Indeed, averaging the grosses of the other three pre-pandemic films, or even those three films with No Time to Die, and getting an average gross for a Bond film of about $900 million (adjusted for April 2023 prices), one sees Skyfall's gross approaching an astonishing $1.5 billion instead--suggestive of an overperformance of 50-70 percent.

Selected James Bond Films, 2006-2021 (Current and Consumer Price Index-Adjusted April 2023 U.S. Dollars, Adjusted Figures in Parentheses)

Casino Royale (2006)--Worldwide--$606 Million ($911 Million); North America-$167 Million ($252 Million)

Quantum of Solace (2008)--Worldwide--$590 Million ($830 Million); North America--$168 Million ($237 Million)

Skyfall (2012)--Worldwide--$1.11 Billion ($1.46 Billion); North America--$304 Million ($402 Million)

Spectre (2015)--Worldwide--$881 Million ($1.13 Billion); North America--$200 Million ($256 Million)

No Time to Die (2021)--Worldwide--$774 Million ($865 Million); North America--$161 Million ($180 Million)

Unsurprisingly the franchise-runners stuck with the nostalgic approach, having 007 (once more) battle Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his SPECTRE organization in the sequel. As the numbers cited above indicate, Spectre was not as successful as Skyfall--but got a boost coming right after that film, and perhaps, from its evocation of 007 Past.

Right now the DCEU seems to be following a similar trajectory. When Warner Bros. put out Man of Steel, and still more, revealed the developing outlines of the DCEU in Superman vs. Batman: Dawn of Justice, there seemed no interest on its part in the earlier incarnations of the characters whatsoever. The whole idea was establishing the new universe, without audiences being distracted, or encouraged to draw comparisons that might be unfavorable, perhaps the more in as they went in a controversy-stoking direction (Ben Affleck is probably no one's favorite Batman--and whatever the claqueurs say a lot of people were probably not thrilled with the fascist wacko incarnation of the character he was given to play that time around); and frankly, because the stakes seemed very high, Warner hoping that this would be its very own equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Of course, it did not all go as planned, by a long shot, the DCEU never approaching Marvel's fecundity with films, with those films it did get to put out there failing to achieve its billion dollar hit-regularizing success.

Indeed, Warner decided to give these reboots . . . yet another reboot (because studios no longer give up on franchises, or even let them lie fallow, they rush to reboot them because in this day and age nothing is more repugnant to a Hollywood Suit than a New Idea).

Prior to this all becoming official the struggling DCEU Universe's runners, like the runners of the Bond franchise, started seeing nostalgia less as a threat to their new wares and more as a prop to them. Thus did the decision to have Michael Keaton play Bruce Wayne/Batman as part of the last DCEU films, a Skyfall-like evocation of franchise past to aid it in the present. Indeed, such nostalgic evocation seems to be the best thing The Flash has going for it, just as it was the best thing Skyfall had going for it, as the press buzzes over it.

Again, this seems to me something more relevant to fans than the broader audience. It also seems more relevant to American fans than their foreign counterparts--for whom there may be no nostalgia to exploit, with the result that the gesture will fall flat. (Consider how the deeply nostalgia-dependent effort to sell Star Wars in China, which missed out on the original release of the trilogy, fell flat in another reminder of Disney's inability to understand and market its own product--"smartest guys in the room" indeed.) This is all the more the case given that, in contrast with the longstanding, vast, global audience for the Bond films there is probably less nostalgia for anything so specific as, say, the Tim Burton Batman films. Still, this is a possible source of surprises here--and if it (or anything else) ends up working in favor of The Flash becoming a blockbuster, expect the entertainment press to get more bullish still in its predictions about what the movie will make in its opening weekend.

What Will The Flash Make on its Opening Weekend? And Over its Longer Run? (A Box Office Prediction)

Seeing the way the buzz for The Flash turned so positive--the way the media has got behind the movie--I wondered whether the audience was actually responsive, and looked forward to Boxoffice Pro's long-range forecast accordingly.

Out today, it predicts an opening weekend in the $115-$140 million range for The Flash, on the way to the film eventually taking in $280-$375 million domestically. In short, there are expectations that--domestically at least--the film will do at least as well as Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and perhaps considerably better, especially over its fuller run. (Yesterday I predicted here that even fairly strong week-to-week holds from here on out would get Guardians 3 to just $330 million or so, about the middle of the range predicted for The Flash.)

What would that imply for the global gross? The bigger pre-pandemic DCEU movies (namely Man of Steel, Superman vs. Batman, Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman, Justice League and Aquaman--all better analogies with The Flash today than smaller productions like Shazam and the pandemic release The Suicide Squad, especially as the box office continues to normalize and the biggest movies are as strong a draw as ever they were), made from 50 to 70 percent of their money internationally.

Between Boxoffice Pro's domestic range, and that figure, we get a very wide range for the possible global gross of from $550 million to almost $1.3 billion.

Of course, until recently the predictions I saw hewed closer to the bottom end of that range than the top--circa $700 million, which would not be far off the mark were the movie to do reasonably well in North America and simply match that abroad (e.g. take in a near-top-of-the-Boxoffice Pro-range $350 million, and make the same overseas; or do a bottom-of-the-range $280 million but make one-and-a-half times that internationally). Still, in the past DCEU movies have, if often seen as disappointments relative to the "Marvel envy" expectations laid on them, still done better than that in real, inflation-adjusted terms. In fact, even in current dollars only two of the six first-rank DCEU movies failed to break the $700 million mark, while all of them blew past it by a considerable way in real terms. Even the lowest earner here, Justice League, grossed almost $800 million when we adjust the dollar values of their year's release to April 2023 dollars, while in the same terms not one but three of the movies broke the billion-dollar barrier (alongside Aquaman, Superman vs. Batman and Wonder Woman doing so), as another came pretty close (Suicide Squad, with its $940 million+ gross back in 2016).

Selected DCEU Films, 2013-2018 (Current and Consumer Price Index-Adjusted April 2023 U.S. Dollars, Adjusted Figures in Parentheses)*

Man of Steel (2013)--Worldwide--$668 Million ($869 Million); Domestic--$291 Million ($378 Million)

Superman vs. Batman: Dawn of Justice (2016)--Worldwide--$871 Million ($1.1 Billion); Domestic--$330 Million ($416 Million)

Suicide Squad (2016)--Worldwide--$747 Million ($943 Million); Domestic--$325 Million ($410 Million)

Wonder Woman (2017)--Worldwide--$822 Million ($1.02 Billion); Domestic--$413 Million ($510 Million)

Justice League (2017)--Worldwide--$658 Million ($794 Million); Domestic--$229 Million ($276 Million)

Aquaman (2018)--Worldwide--$1.15 Billion ($1.39 Billion); Domestic--$335 Million ($404 Million)

Might The Flash then not do better--perhaps much better?--than $700 million. Alas, the DCEU universe is not just in decline, but on its way out, so that there is no build-up toward anything bigger and better such as likely helped some of the earlier films. It may also suffer the effects of bad press about the star, while facing a lot of summer competition.

I might add that good as its press is lately it falls short of the kind of cheer-leading I remember for Wonder Woman back in 2017.

All of this gives it more obstacles to overcome than the preceding films had, less with which to overcome them, and less to gain if it does accomplish the feat (such that even if a pleasantly surprised audience supplies good word-of-mouth it may only count for so much).

So let us let us play it safe and focus on the middle of the relevant ranges with regard to The Flash's domestic gross, and that gross' share of the global total--about $330 million domestic, with somewhere around 60 percent of the revenue foreign, working out to a global gross the vicinity of $800-$850 million. Recognizing $550 million as the absolute rock bottom, and allowing some room for error at the high end (rounding up from 8.5 to 9), $900 million would seem a reasonable high end to the range--so that $600-$900 million is the broader range I have in mind for the time being, with $700-$850 million the more plausible range within that, the movie breaking the billion-dollar barrier still a long shot.

All the same, I do not doubt I will have more to say about this in the coming weeks as more information comes in--with, in fact, one angle on a possible long shot already germinating into its own post as I write this.

* I took the film's gross and adjusted from the prices of the film's year of release (e.g. 2013) to the prices of April 2023 (the latest now available).

Will Guardians of the Galaxy 3's Legs Hold Up? (A Box Office Prediction About Guardians of the Galaxy 3's Third Weekend--and Fast X's First)

After a disappointing debut Guardians of the Galaxy 3 had a better than expected second weekend--its gross over the weekend sliding, at last calculation, just under 48 percent from the level of the previous weekend (as against the 67-70 percent drops in first-to-second weekend gross that the last three Marvel Cinematic Universe sequels had seen). The general expectation seems to be that this pattern will continue to hold, with Boxoffice Pro anticipating a $30 million+ third weekend that will raise Guardians of the Galaxy's take to over $267 million.

Assuming this to be the case, what would it mean for the film's overall performance? Let us consider not merely weekends, but weeks. In its first Monday-to-Sunday period after the first weekend, which gave the film its better than expected gross of $215 million as of last Sunday, the film took in about $96.3 million. Boxoffice Pro's anticipation suggests a $52.8 million take in the following seven day period, a mere 45 percent drop. Assuming the 45 percent week-on-week drops continue (so that at the end of the fourth weekend the movie has $297 million in the till, $313 million at the end of the fifth, etc.) the film will top out in the vicinity of $330 million domestically.

Where the global situation is concerned the calculation is trickier. Still, the film's earnings have been a bit more robust than usual overseas. Where the prior two Guardians films made 22-33 percent more internationally than they did at home the recent film, to date, has been making more like 50 percent more. Assuming that holds up the film's international take could be in the vicinity of $495 million. Added to the domestic gross that works out to a global take of some $825 million.

These assumptions are not without their element of optimism. (For all we know the bump the film had the second weekend might not last, the grosses eroding more quickly from here on out.) But they are still within the $700-$875 million range discussed here as plausible last week (indeed, near the middle of that range).

Expect the press to make the most of the $800 million+ gross should it happen, comparing it favorably with the grosses of the prior two films--though the reality would be more mixed. Today's prices are not those of 2013, or even 2017, and in real terms an $825 million take, or even an $875 million take, would leave the movie the lowest grossing of the trilogy by a not insignificant margin (the original Guardians made a little under a billion in today's terms, Guardians 2 over a billion), and it does not do to gloss over the fact. However, it would constitute a more modest drop from the gross of the prior film than has been seen for other Marvel movies (a drop of perhaps a fifth, as against the quarter-drop Thor 4 suffered, the over one-third drop suffered by Ant-Man 3, the drop in real gross of about half suffered by Black Panther 2).

Considering this it seems worth noting the possible implications for the next really major summer movie, Fast X. The Boxoffice Pro prediction regarding the film has broadened--with the floor now lowered to $58 million. Suggestive of a final North American take that may be under $150 million, the more in as the chances of its surprising everyone with even Guardians of the Galaxy-like legs are not great (a "leggy run" is by definition a rarity, and by its third weekend the competition will be thickening, with the most anticipated movie of the summer, the next animated Spider-Man, hitting theaters then), the film is admittedly expected to make three to four times as much overseas. Still, this would easily leave it under the $800 million mark--while the production budget has been reported as high as $340 million (which is to say, almost a $100 million more than a Guardians of the Galaxy movie expected to make at least as much). We now hear that Fast and Furious 11 is due out in 2025--but, barring the greatest studio bull-headedness about sticking to franchises even after they have ceased to pay, that combination of falling grosses and rising costs seems bound to have consequences for those plans.