Weekend Box Office Bet: The Flash, Elemental will duke it out for top spot
This week’s box office will see a legendary DC superhero face off against one of the biggest animation studios around.
The long-anticipated Flash film will finally open on Friday, starring Ezra Miller as Barry Allen/The Flash, Sasha Lane as Kara Zor-El/Supergirl and Michael Keaton as his 1990s take on Bruce Wayne/Batman.
The film will likely top the box office charts, as many superhero films do. However, how likely is it that audiences will show up in droves for one of the final films in the DC Extended Universe like they have for Marvel?
March’s Shazam!: Fury of the Gods and last fall’s Black Adam were major box office and critical disappointments for Warner Bros., with 2022’s The Batman the last DC live-action film to really hook audiences in with the same interest as Marvel.
The studio has brought in filmmaker James Gunn to lead the creative reset at DC for a reason. The Flash represents a moment in time more than it does a glimpse at the future. The film had received plenty of hype in recent months, but a 68-percent Rotten Tomatoes score hints at a more divisive final product.
As for Elemental, Pixar’s first original film to hit theaters since 2020’s Onward faces its own challenges.
Pixar’s last theatrical endeavor, Lightyear, failed to really make much of a mark as supposed confusion over the film’s identity within the Toy Story landscape. That film only garnered $51 million for its opening weekend around this time last year, decent money in a general sense but a letdown for a movie starring Buzz Lightyear.
Elemental is a wholly original film, and there has been much ado about Disney’s decision to send a few recent Pixar films straight to streaming in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Films like Soul, Luca and Turning Red played exclusively at home, much to the chagrin of theater owners and families who wanted something to take their kids to see at the multiplex.
As the recent box office success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish have shown, families will still come out in droves to see animated films when they’re available.
Elemental, advertised as a rom-com between dueling elements of water and fire, won’t have the boost of intellectual property that those other two films listed had at release. However, it will have the Pixar logo. Will that be enough to make it a financial success for a studio that really needs one?
Right now, we’ll go with the tracking on The Flash and say that a roughly $70 million haul makes sense.
The next Aquaman film awaits in December, and Gunn’s DC reset begins hard with a new Superman film in 2025. Whether or not The Flash stays with this new plan will depend on how much audiences come out to see it in the weeks ahead. Word of mouth will be crucial.
As for Elemental, don’t count out Pixar’s ability to get families in the theater in the summer months. While Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and The Little Mermaid will still get plenty of families out to the movies, Elemental will likely come in ahead of projections for a high 30s/low 40s number. Don’t count out the power of Disney to get people in seats, even when it’s not as many as usual.
The horror-comedy The Blackening is tracking for a $7.5 million opening, but strong reviews and the boost of not fielding a lot of competition in either genre could set this one up to exceed expectations.
Top five box office predictions (June 16-18):
- The Flash: $73 million
- Elemental: $45 million:
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: $35 million
- Transformers: Rise of the Beasts: $30 million
- The Little Mermaid: $22 million