‘The Flash’ Box Office ‘Disaster’ Exposes DC’s $1.1 Billion Problem for Warner Bros.

variety.com:

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story mentions a few significant plot developments in “The Flash,” currently playing in theaters.

In the climax of “The Flash,” Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) watches helplessly as his timeline-hopping escapades cause several other superhero universes to careen into each other and become obliterated in the process.

Ironically, Warner Bros. is facing almost an identical dilemma — and the stakes could be nearly as existential. “The Flash” is the second of four mega-budgeted DC adaptations the studio is set to release this year, starting with “Shazam!

Fury of the Gods” in March, and followed by “Blue Beetle” and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” in August and December. Yet these movies were conceived and greenlit by an executive team that all have departed the studio; in their place, new DC Studios chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran have announced they will reboot the DC franchise in 2025, starting with Gunn’s “Superman: Legacy.” That’s left Warners in one of the worst rock-and-a-hard-place conundrums in memory: Its 2023 slate of DC films are now orphans in a moribund cinematic universe, but the studio still needs audiences to see them on a blockbuster scale. “It’s a perhaps unavoidable but terrible case of timing,” says a source at a rival studio. “Audiences don’t feel like they have to invest two hours of their life because it’s not going to matter going forward.” Indeed, things have not been going well.