When The Flash finally arrived in theaters and wasted no time in becoming one of the biggest box office bombs of all-time, the number-crunchers claimed that Warner Bros. would have lost less money had it been pulled from theaters entirely and released exclusively on streaming. Unfortunately, the same may end up being true of Blue Beetle.
Originally scheduled as an HBO Max exclusive, the origin story for Jaime Reyes was bumped up to a big screen release, but has suffered as a result. As well as the marketing campaign being virtually non-existent, striking actors mean there’s hardly anybody to promote the film, but a small glimmer of hope exists after James Gunn confirmed the title hero will carry on as part of his rebranded DCU.
On the other side of the coin, though, early projections have Blue Beetle tracking for one of DC’s worst opening weekends in over 40 years, so there’s a mountain to climb in order for the $120 million superhero spectacular to turn a profit. Star Xolo Maridueña has always been confident in its chances of success, but the conditions he outlined to Fandango to guarantee sequels may not be capable of being met.
“I have had the pleasure of getting to speak with Mr. James Gunn and the whole DC fam. And, you know, at the end of the day, I think, first, we have to cross this first hill, right? And introduce Jaime to the world. But I think it’s up to the audience to watch the movie. It’s up to everyone to show up for the movie and it’s so wonderful that we get to make movies like this.
And if it does well, we’ll get to open more doors for more Blue Beetles, and not even just for the people up here, but there’s… we’ve got a whole thing set up. So, so many Beetles from so many comics to choose from and really just a whole world where we’re super appreciative that DC’s took the first swing at the live-action Latino superhero movie. So we’re ready to do it again if the crowd wants it.”
Making a sequel to flop is terrible financial management, so even if Blue Beetle becomes a regular fixture of the DCU moving forward, standalone sequels might be very hard to come by if the upcoming comic book adaptation walks the same path as The Flash and Shazam! Fury of the Gods.