DC Studios is presently in the midst of a big franchise reboot, with co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran planning out a new DC Universe... but one of the side effects has been a slump at the box office. There have been a number of disappointments in 2023 so far, but if we're on the hunt for silver linings, Angel Manuel Soto's Blue Beetle now has the distinction of being the title that ended the reign of Greta Gerwig's Barbie in the #1 spot at the domestic box office .
Check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.
Blue Beetle Is Unable To Stop DC's On-Going Slump At The Box Office
To be fair to the aforementioned rebooting process, DC's on-going misfortune at the box office began prior to the official news that the DC Extended Universe would be ending and making way for the new DC Universe. It was really the release of Jaume Collet-Serra's Black Adam last fall that got the bad times rolling, the film having a $67 million opening in the United States and Canada before going on to make only $391.3 million worldwide from its global theatrical run. David F. Sandberg's Shazam! Fury Of The Gods and Andy Muschietti's The Flash ended up also being disappointments, and now Blue Beetle has generated middling results.
Making $25.4 million in its first three days (per The Numbers) ranks the new comic book movie twenty-third among 2023 releases, having made more than Lee Cronin's Evil Dead Rise ($24.5 million) but less than Jeff Rowe's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem ($28 million). It's the least money made by a DC Extended Universe released exclusively theatrically (meaning that James Gunn's The Suicide Squad and Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman 1984 don't count), as its Friday-to-Sunday total is smaller than what Shazam! Fury Of The Gods did in its debut back in March ($30.1 million).
Blue Beetle has gotten a better (albeit still mixed) critical response than the last three DC films, but its also worth noting that the promotional campaign was hampered by the on-going WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes (none of the stars were permitted to promote the movie because of their union memberships).
The feather in Blue Beetle's cap is that it's the title that ended Barbie's run at #1 – though that's a bittersweet studio victory due to the fact that both titles are Warner Bros. releases. Despite the fact that Greta Gerwig's movie is now in its fifth weekend of release, it put up a substantial fight. After making $33.8 million last weekend, the Margot Robbie-led blockbuster had just a 36 percent weekend-to-weekend drop.
Another positive spin to put on this box office performance is acknowledging that Blue Beetle cost considerably less to make than its DC franchise predecessors from the last year. Both Black Adam and The Flash had budgets in the $200 million range, and Angel Manuel Soto's film apparently even costless than the $125 million Shazam! Fury Of The Gods. According to Deadline, it was made for a reported $104 million. That fact doesn't totally rewrite its box office story, but its certainly in a better place than, say, André Øvredal's The Last Voyage Of The Demeter, which cost $45 million to make and has slipped to tenth place in its second weekend, having only made $11 million domestically so far.
Strays Continues A Rough Stretch For Comedies At The Box Office
Comedies and horror movies both deliver special theatrical experiences, as it's fun to both laugh and scream as part of a collective – but audiences have definitely been favoring one more than the other as of late. While crowds have been flocking to scary films as of late, non-franchise funny movies (a.k.a not Barbie) have been left to flop, and Josh Greenbaum's Strays is the latest victim of this trend.
The dog-centric comedy featuring the voices of Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx was made with a modest budget of $46 million, according to The New York Times, but it managed to make just $8.3 million in its first three days. That puts it in an incredibly tough position in regards to potentially make a profit, as it's not exactly in a great position to demonstrate strong legs in the coming weeks.
While I gave Strays a pass in my CinemaBlend review, noting that it is more impressive than funny, critics overall have not demonstrated a lot of love for the film. And while movie-goers seem to be appreciating it to a greater extent (it has a 74 percent audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a "B+" grade from CinemaScore surveys), there's not a whole lot out there suggesting that this is going to blossom as a word-of-mouth hit.
On the plus side, it doesn't have direct competition in the coming weeks hunting for its same audience, with the two new big wide releases being Neill Blomkamp's Gran Turismo and Antoine Fuqua's Equalizer 3, but it's unlikely that Strays climbs any higher than fifth place in the Top 10. Unless it manages to have a miraculous second weekend, it may fade fast.
Next weekend will be the last one of August 2023, and we're holding out hope that the summer season has a strong conclusion. Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to see the latest box office results, and to get a preview of all of the big movies set to come out between now and the end of the year, head over to our 2023 Movie Release Calendar.
