“A lot of people don’t care” This is why this DC superhero film wouldn’t have worked according to its director

News culture “A lot of people don’t care” This is why this DC superhero film wouldn’t have worked according to its director

One of the DCEU’s latest projects, the Flash by Andy Muschietti had a particularly eventful genesis. Having known many screenwriters and just as many directors who left the project for “different creatives”, the film was postponed numerous times before landing in theaters 9 years after its announcement and 6 years after its initial release date. It is therefore in June 2023 that the entire public can finally see The Flash, a work whose production was so visibly rushed that its director came to defend its unfinished special effects on the pretext of artistic will.

All that for that

In any case, troubled by production problems and an actor on the run, the theatrical release The Flash got off to a bad start and, logically enough, only collected a little over $250 million at the box office: an insufficient result to reimburse a budget of 200 million dollars. Considered one of the worst films in the DCEU, the feature film nevertheless allowed Muschietti to reclaim the direction of the future Batman : The Brave and the Bold which should introduce the Dark Knight and his son, Damian Wayne, into the new DCU led by James Gunn and Peter Safran.

It’s not my fault

Recently, the director returned to his previous film at the microphone of Radio TUa Hispanic web radio, during which he spoke about the failure of The Flash.

The Flash failed, apart from the reasons we think (Ezra Miller, the superhero fatigue), because (…) when you spend 200 million to make a film, Warner wants even your grandmother to go see the film in the cinema. And I’ve realized in private discussions that a lot of people don’t care about Flash as a character. In particular (women above and below 25 years old).

This translation, provided by the Home of DCU fan accountseems in fact to explain part of the reasons which could have created the failure of the film, but fails to fully explain it. Indeed, if Barry Allen is far from having the appeal of a Superman or a Batman for the general public, the character is not entirely unknown to him either. Comparatively, a character like Shazamwhich was really little known to the general public, managed to be profitable, although on a budget half as large.

Furthermore, this supposed lack of public interest in Flash is directly contradicted by the existence of the series of the same name, produced by the CW between 2014 and 2023, and which met with immense success with the public. If the prior attractiveness of a license and/or a character to the public is important, The Flash was primarily affected by problematic production, a lead actor who temporarily made headlines for the wrong reasons, and terrible word of mouth once the film hit theaters.