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‘The Flash’ director says the movie flopped because it didn’t have a broad enough appeal

The movie was a failure both at the box office and with critics.

By Joe Allen Jan 14, 2025 1:46 PM

Ezra Miller in The Flash — Warner Bros.

2023 was not a banner year for superhero movies, and one of the most distressing was The Flash. The movie, which had been long-delayed, was not the huge success that many suspected it might be. Instead, it was something of a disaster both critically and commercially.

Now, Andy Muschetti, who directed the film, has weighed in on why he thinks that is.

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“The Flash failed, among all the other reasons, because it wasn’t a movie that appealed to all four quadrants. It failed at that,” Muschetti explained during an interview on Radio Tu’s La Baulera del Coso. “When you spend $200 million making a movie, [Warner Bros.] wants to bring even your grandmother to the theaters.”

He went into even more detail, explaining that people don’t care about The Flash in certain demographics the way they do about characters like Batman and Spider-Man.

“I’ve found in private conversations that a lot of people just don’t care about the Flash as a character,” Muschietti said. “Particularly the two female quadrants. All of that is just the wind going against the film I’ve learned.”

The movie grossed just $271 million by the end of its run, which doesn’t make it a total failure, but pales in comparison to the highs that some superhero movies have achieved. The movie was plagued by production delays related to turnover in the director’s chair as well as off-camera drama around the film’s star, Ezra Miller. In spite of an extended cameo from Michael Keaton, The Flash never caught on fire with audiences.

Joe Allen is a freelance writer at Digital Trends, where he covers Movies and TV. He frequently writes streaming… Read Full Bio

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