The results are in, and Blue Beetle disappointingly managed to fare even worse at the domestic box office than first expected, with the DCU’s latest commercial catastrophe coming in $400,000 short of the initial estimates.
Things are even worse on foreign soil, where the well-received origin story failed to even reach $19 million from international markets, almost 50 percent behind the franchise’s previous record low opening weekend for an overseas debut, which was only set earlier this year by Shazam! Fury of the Gods.
In fact, despite opening in less theaters and suffering severely reduced capacity due to its status as an experimental release at the height of the pandemic’s first wave, Wonder Woman 1984 still handily trounced Blue Beetle when it came to bringing in ticket sales from countries outside of the United States, which is nothing short of a tragedy.
Naturally, then, Warner Bros. decided the smartest course of action was to pre-emptively blame the disappointing performance on the weather, with Exhibitor Relations revealing the studio had claimed that “the storm’s impact is anticipated to be significant, particularly in Southern California where the film is over‐indexing.”
That’s entirely valid in microcosm, but it doesn’t account for the fact Blue Beetle under-performed on what was quite literally a global scale. The apathy towards the DCU has become clearer than ever this year after three high-profile flops in a row, but as much as the title hero deserved better, it remains entirely up in the air as to whether or not James Gunn will pull the trigger on a solo sequel, or if the costumed crimefighter will be relegated to a glorified guest star post-reboot.