Calling the box office performance of Shazam! Fury of the Gods a disappointment would be a considerable understatement, but at least David F. Sandberg’s second stab at the property managed to quietly sneak away once Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania took its place as the most disliked comic book adaptation of the year.
Whereas Zachary Levi’s first outing as the title hero turned out to be one of the DCU’s best-reviewed and most profitable entries, the follow-up was anything but. Having limped out of multiplexes with a measly $133 million in the bank, Fury of the Gods isn’t just the worst-performing installment in the history of Warner Bros.’ shared universe, but one of the biggest superhero flops of the modern age.
To put things into perspective, Evil Dead Rise flew past $140 million in worldwide ticket sales this week, which is remarkable when you consider it’s the fifth entry in a saga that kicked off all the way back in the early 1980s, while Lee Cronin’s legacy sequel wasn’t even designed with a big screen release in mind, until the studio decided to yank it from HBO Max and give it an upgrade.
Of course, the main difference between the two projects outside of genre, budget, and ultimately success is that one of them is a worthy continuation of a legendary mythos that won rave reviews from critics and audiences while fully justifying its own existence, something Fury of the Gods didn’t do. With The Flash tracking for an opening weekend of over $100 million, DC fatigue can’t even be used as a ready-made excuse, either.