Summary The failure of The Flash at the box office made Birds of Prey’s box office results look significantly better in comparison.
Birds of Prey, despite being labeled a failure, earned double its production budget at the box office, while The Flash fell short of expectations.
The Flash’s box office failure was more concerning due to factors such as its established IP, the character’s popularity, and Warner Bros.’ high expectations, making Birds of Prey’s performance appear more impressive in retrospect.
The failure of The Flash at the box office retroactively makes another supposed DCEU failure look much better by comparison, three years after the latter’s release. The Flash was released in June 2023 as the bridge between the failing DCEU and the promising reboot of the franchise under James Gunn. Acting as a sequel to 2017’s Justice League, The Flash was a loose adaptation of the iconic Flashpoint storyline from DC Comics.
Despite its importance to the wider franchise, The Flash was plagued with several production issues before finally releasing. From three different changes in director to multiple, extensive rewrites of the film’s initial script, The Flash had a difficult time moving beyond pre-production. That was until Andy Muschietti guided the film to a June 2023 release, with The Flash’s box office bomb drastically underperforming on Warner Bros. expectations for the DCEU installment. This failure makes another DC movie look much better by comparison, which was similarly said to have failed three years ago upon its release.
The Flash Makes Birds Of Prey’s Box Office Results Look Way Better
The film in question is Birds of Prey, the Harley Quinn-centric movie released by DC in 2020. The film focused on Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn after the events of 2016’s Suicide Squad as she formed the titular team alongside DC characters like Huntress, Black Canary, and Cassandra Cain. Produced on a budget of around $82-$100 million, Birds of Prey was labeled a failure at the box office.
The film earned a worldwide total of $205 million by the end of its theatrical run, making double its production budget which likely reduced the cost of other budgetary concerns like marketing and distribution. Despite falling short of its break-even point, Birds of Prey’s box office looks significantly better after the failed release of The Flash. The Flash’s budget was around $200-$220 million, with its worldwide box office haul maxing out at $268 million. With the 2023 film failing to earn double its budget like 2020’s Birds of Prey, the latter looks much less like a failure, with other factors proving the former’s box office returns are more worrying.
Why Birds Of Prey’s Box Office Results Are Less Worrying Than The Flash
One of the main reasons why Birds of Prey’s box office total is less worrying than The Flash’s is the less-established IP the film is based on. While DC Comics fans will know who the Birds of Prey are, the team does not hold the same iconicity as the Justice League or Marvel’s Avengers. With that in mind, the film earning double its production budget all while releasing in the uncertain time of February 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic began is much more impressive than first thought. Similarly, Birds of Prey was a largely self-contained story with little in the way of wider DCEU connections outside its central character.
With The Flash though, none of these factors were in play making the DCEU movie’s box office failure worse. Flash is one of the most well-known DC characters to both DC fans and general audiences alike. The character has been a DC Comics staple since his creation, and that is without mentioning his appearances in the successful Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League in the DCEU. Furthermore, The Flash’s story is integral to the future of James Gunn’s DCU, while also containing a popular legacy character in Michael Keaton’s Batman.
Combine these elements with the overwhelming hype Warner Bros. generated for The Flash, and the film was expected to vastly out-gross what it ended up earning. This highlights just how worrying The Flash’s box office really was, as a film of this magnitude with its importance to DC Studios all while centering on a much more iconic character than the Birds of Prey should have been pushing for $1 billion at the worldwide box office. However, The Flash’s historic box office failure proved this not to be the case and retroactively shines a much more positive light on Birds of Prey three years after the latter’s release.