‘Shazam! Fury of the God” is projected to make around $5 million this weekend, this in its third week of release. It’s an atrocious outcome for the DCEU and Warner Bros.
The film opened earlier this month with a terrible $30 million weekend; the first one had a $56 million opening. Mediocre reviews surely didn’t help, ditto all the drama that’s been plaguing the DCEU the last year.
Its accumulative worldwide gross so far has only been $100 million. By the end of its run, it will likely not exceed the $125 million mark. Even before its release, some were already saying that the movie had to make at least $312.5 million to break even.
With a production budget of over $125 million and another reported $100 million in marketing costs, “Shazam 2” is on track to lose a significant amount of money for Warner Bros. You’ve got to imagine this franchise is now kaput and James Gunn won’t be pursuing it any further.
Yesterday evening, I started emailing box-office gurus that I knew and asked them to estimate, when all is said and done, what the tail-end losses might look like for ‘Fury of the Gods.’ Suffice to say, there is no good news for Warner Bros. They must be preparing for the worst, it’s looking grim.
Most of the people I emailed did state that it’s too early to truly know a precise figure, at least until we see how the film does on PVOD, and the value to HBO Max ahead is indeterminate.
With that being said, on paper at least, losses in excess of $150 million seem very likely for the film. That’s the “safe” figure that most of the people I spoke to gave me, some aimed even higher, with one person telling me that if it doesn’t make any good business on PVOD then losses could even be as high as $200 million.
What happened, exactly? We’re not entirely sure. Maybe the lack of excitement for a ‘Shazam’ film combined with the superhero genre starting to dry up with audiences. That’s what I would bet.
I don’t necessarily know for sure if the comic book movie is dying, but Shazam sure as hell is.
The ‘Smile’ franchise has a new director. David Bruckner, who made “The Night House” and the 2022 “Hellraiser” reboot, has been hired to direct “Smile 3” for Paramount.