While it’s not impossible for a superhero movie to be tightly-budgeted, when it comes to the cinematic fare that DC and Marvel churn out, it can be safely assumed that a lot of money will be poured into those productions. Take The Flash, which we know is one of three upcoming DC movies left to arrive in 2023; with its story focusing on The Fastest Man Alive teaming up with multiple versions of Batman, Supergirl and even his own doppelgänger across various realities, there’s no way that was going to be a cheap filmmaking endeavor. That said, the budget for this movie has reportedly been revealed, and apparently it wasn’t expensive as you might think.
In a profile that CBC News wrote about The Flash production designer Paul Austerberry, it was mentioned that the movie was budgeted at around $220 million. Assuming this number is accurate, that certainly qualifies The Flash as an expensive blockbuster overall, but it’s nonetheless trailing behind a few of its fellow DC Extended Universe entries. Man of Steel is estimated to have cost as much as $225 million, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice cost between $250-300 million, and Justice League cost a whopping $300 million (which isn’t even counting the additional funds spent on Zack Snyder’s Justice League a few years later).
So The Flash won’t go down as one of the highest-budgeted superhero movies of all time, especially once you factor in various Marvel movies, but I cannot emphasize this enough, Warner Bros. Pictures clearly didn’t skimp on putting it together. Paul Austerberry described the movie as a “big deal” for WB, and at the beginning of January, it was reported that the studio believes The Flash will be a hit on the scale of what The Dark Knight was in 2008. So assuming it does dominate at the box office this summer, that will be $220 million (give or take) well spent.
The good news for Warner Bros. Pictures and people intrigued about The Flash is that so far, the buzz surrounding the movie is stellar. Last year, word came in that the DC movie had been “extraordinarily well received” in early test screenings, and just last week, it was screened at CinemaCon and exceeded CinemaBlend’s expectations. The public still has a little over a month to go until it can check out the first movie with Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen as the central character, you can watch the latest trailer for The Flash, which goes all in on Michael Keaton’s Batman, below.
Directed by Andy Muschietti and written by Christina Hodson, The Flash races into theaters on June 16. Use your HBO Max subscription to catch up on this version of Barry Allen’s past DCEU appearances while you go through the DC movies in order.
