It’s obvious to any fan that superhero movies had a rough 2023. But even the studios making these movies are now admitting that comic-book movies may be in a bit of trouble.
For example, during Warner Bros.’ quarterly earnings call this week, Warner Bros. Discovery’s CFO, Gunnar Wiedenfels gave a less-than-bullish description of the company’s recent film output. He said, via Variety…
On the film side, obviously this is going to continue to be a hit-driven business. Just last year was a great example, with the greatest success in the film studio’s history, and some real challenges across the industry on the on the superhero side.
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The greatest success in the film studio’s history was, of course, Barbie, which was the top-grossing title across the entire film industry in 2023. And it blew away all of Warner Bros. numerous DC Comics titles for the year, all of which underperformed at the box office. The list of superhero flops and bombs from Warner Bros. last year include Shazam! Fury of the Gods ($134 million), The Flash ($271 million), Blue Beetle ($130 million), and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom ($433.7 million, which sounds pretty good until you realize the first Aquaman grossed over $1 billion at the box office).
Those four titles represent the end of the DC Extended Universe, which began with a great deal of promise about a decade ago and ended with, well, that mess of middling titles last year. Warners will next try to reboot their DC characters in a whole new universe overseen by writer/director James Gunn.
Warner Bros.’ next superhero movie, Gunn’s Superman: Legacy, doesn’t open in theaters until the summer of 2025. They do have one comic-book movie, a sequel to the massively successful Joker, due out this fall.
And Warners’ competition at Marvel only has one superhero movie scheduled for all of 2024, this summer’s Deadpool & Wolverine. Maybe absence really will make the heart grow fonder in this case… otherwise superhero fatigue could grow into a fatal disease for this genre.
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