5 Reasons Shazam! Fury of the Gods is A Box Office Flop
Shazam! Fury of the Gods flew its way into theaters last weekend and if you’ve been following the box office…you know it’s not good. It’s not doing good at the box office whatsoever, why is that? What’s going on with the box office? Let’s get started!
The Numbers: Shazam! Fury of the Gods opened to $30.1 million, which is not a good number. The movie had a budget of about $100 million, this is about a ⅓ of its budget it made in its opening weekend. That’s not a sign, when a superhero movie opens that low, that’s not good. The day I’m writing this, we haven’t gotten the numbers for Friday, March 24th. So I don’t know how the movie will drop from its first weekend to second weekend. In its opening week, it made $36.6 million domestically and $71.2 million worldwide. I’m going to be shocked by Shazam! Fury of the Gods crosses $100 million domestically, I think it’ll be about $80-$90 million. And I’m guessing only about $190 million worldwide, I don’t think this movie will cross $200 million worldwide, I’ll be shocked. The original Shazam! wasn’t a big hit, but it was hit. It made $365.9 million worldwide, with $53.5 in its domestic opening weekend. Fury of the Gods made almost $20 million less than the first movie. Which for a sequel, is very unusual and not a good sign. Typically sequels open better than the first one, this one didn’t. Obviously the Shazam! The franchise is a part of the DCEU, but between these movies and Black Adam it has its own little pocket franchise inside the larger one. And Black Adam is the highest grossing both domestically and opening weekend of these movies. Black Adam made $67.9 million in its opening weekend, more than double what Fury of the Gods did. As of now, with the numbers it has it’s going to be one of the lowest grossing DCEU movies. As of now, four of them have grossed under $100 million domestically. Those other three were affected by COVID, those being Birds of Prey, Woman Woman 1984, and The Suicide Squad. Looks like Fury of the Gods will surpass Wonder Woman 1984 and The Suicide Squad. Birds of Prey made $84.1 million, I’m guessing Fury of the Gods isn’t going to do all that much better than that.
People just didn’t care: The original Shazam! is a well liked movie, people generally view that as a high point for the DCEU. But it’s not one of those movies where people now almost four years later go “wow, Shazam! is an amazing movie! I love that movie!”. So I don’t ever think that a sequel was going to do amazing numbers, I figured it would do solid numbers. But these bad numbers, yikes, that's not good. And I just really don’t think people were all that interested in this movie. In the movie review space on YouTube and Social Media, people weren’t talking about this movie the way they do when other comic book movies came out. We got two trailers back eight months back at San Diego Comic Con, when it was supposed to come out in December. Then a second one about this time in January and both just came and went. People didn’t really talk about them, and that’s not a good sign. Going back several weeks now, reports started to trickle out regarding the opening weekend predictions for this movie. And the original predictions were already low with about a $30-$40 million guess. Obviously the actual numbers were just barely matching those predictions. So pretty early on, people knew this movie wasn’t going to do great. And even tied to that, in the last week for marketing in the tv spot they spoiled the big cameo in the movie, because they knew people weren’t caring about their movie. So they put a big cameo in the marketing for the movie, just to sell more tickets. And I don’t think that helped them out at all, that makes them sound very disparate. Even after that was put out there, the director David F. Sandberg tweeted saying he doesn’t want people to watch the tv spots, because they are spoiling stuff they don’t want revealed. Zachary Levi then retweeted it.
Superhero Fatigue: So far in 2023 we’ve gotten TWO comic book movies with this and Quantumania. And both have received very mixed reviews for critics and audiences. Nobody seems to be loving them or hating them. If they gave it a positive review, it’s slightly positive. If they are negative, it’s slightly negative. But nobody is super far in either direction, I think both are good. I enjoyed both of the movies a good bit. But the common criticism between them is that they are just generic. Part of what made Shazam! work was that it’s just something just a little bit different for the genre. Big as a superhero movie, not done before. It’s smaller scale, it’s not about a city being destroyed. It’s a very personal story as well. All of that made it something interesting and different for the genre. Fury of the Gods loses a lot of that charm and replaces it with big special action with villains wanting to rule the world. That’s something that’s been done several times in comic book movies before. That’s also what the trailers solid it on, they solid it on big spectacle action. And that’s something that a whole lot of comic book movies do nowadays. So there wasn’t anything new, distinct, or exciting surrounding this movie. It just felt like another one of these movies, now I like those movies. I liked this movie, I think it’s a good movie. But a lot of people are just becoming so burned out on modern day superhero blockbusters that they are losing interest in this genre. That does make me nervous for the box office for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and The Flash, I don’t think those movies would be in trouble. I think there’s a lot more excitement for those movies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if these more B-grade superhero lead superhero movies start to bomb. I’m nervous for Blue Beetle in August, I think they will move it to HBO Max. If they put that movie out in theaters, I think it could be a bomb for 2023.
Universe Reboot: So as most movie fans know, James Gunn has been hired as the new president of DC. He’s starting his new DC universe called the DCU. Back in January he announced several movies and tv shows that will be coming out. And basically Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is the last DCEU movie to come out. Superman: Legacy will kick off the universe in July 2025. But once December rolls around and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom swims its way into theaters, no more DCEU. And this kind of ties back to what I said earlier, but people just don’t care. Since we know that this universe ends later this year, people are probably just “what’s the point?”. Even if we do get a third Shazam! movie, it’s not going to be a continuation of this. So again, that even makes me nervous for The Flash, Blue Beetle, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. I’m wondering if 2023 is going to be the year of comic book movie box office bombs, if so…I think the genre is in trouble.
HBO Max Release Schedule: In 2021, Warner Brothers did this thing where every WB to come out in 2021 would be released in theaters and on HBO Max the same day. That very much hurt the box office of those movies, The Suicide Squad and The Matrix Resurrections very much hurt by that. In 2022 they put the movie in theaters and then after 45 days would drop it on HBO Max. So The Batman came out in March 2022, April 2022 it was on HBO Max. And once it did, the box office numbers for that movie went down very hard. After that movie and Secrets of Dumbledore they said they aren’t doing that anymore. With Black Adam they dropped it on HBO Max once the hype and excitement was kind of gone. So the movie basically had two months while it was in theaters and not on streaming. And I’m wondering how many people are just going to wait to watch this movie until it drops on HBO Max. People might not want to pay $12 for a movie ticket, but will watch it if it’s free at home. So I’m going to be very curious what the streaming numbers for this movie will be once it drops on HBO Max.
Competitive release window: The original Shazam! the movie opened in early April 2019 so they put out this movie in a very similar release date with March 2023. But March of this year was just a stacked month of movies. It started with Creed III which made a bonkers amount of money, Scream VI did solid numbers, then we have this movie, and then after that we have John Wick Chapter 4 which once again looks to make a lot of money. And then you have this movie stuck in the middle of it, where it’s just going to bomb hard. There’s too much competition coming out in March, one was going to bomb…Fury of the Gods was that movie. Even once April hits and you have Super Mario Brothers and Evil Dead Rise, this movie is just going to get swept around the rug. When I’m writing this we do have the numbers for Friday, March 24th to get a good guess for where it’s second week is going to be. The movie made $11.7 million opening day, and $2.3 million the next Friday dropping 79.9%. So this movie is looking to have about a 70% drop from the first to second weekend. This movie could have one of the biggest drops in comic book movie history. Pretty much one Dungeons and Dragons comes out next weekend, this movie is going to be forgotten about. People aren’t going to be talking about it or going to theaters to go see it.
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