The Blue Beetle movie directed by Angel Manuel Soto and written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer has ended its theatrical run and is the lowest DC film at the box office.
Blue Beetle was released on August 18 and finished its run on Oct. 5 with only $128 million worldwide.
Of that, $71.2 million made up the domestic box office, with $56.8 making up the foreign gross.
At least the fans like it
Those small number of fans that did show up to see the flick did at least enjoy it as the Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score is at 92%, which is actually the second best of the DCEU movies, only trailing the Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score for Zack Snyder’s Justice League at 93%.
However, the IMDb rating is a different story as Blue Beetle isn’t rated all that high and comes in on the lower side of the DC flicks: Blue Beetle has a 6.1 rating, but it’s better than Shazam: Fury of the Gods‘ 6.0 and the 2018 Suicide Squad‘s 5.9.
Shazam: Fury of the Gods comes in as the second lowest DC box office with $133.8 million.
Diverse audience no-showed
Blue Beetle opened domestically to $25 million on Aug 18-20 and saw a 51.4% drop in its second weekend to $12.1 million.
While the film was promoted as being all about diversity, and even Zack Snyder helped promote the film using the hashtag “representation matters,” the diverse audience the flick targeted didn’t show as in Brazil and Mexico, it only brought in around $14 million.
Bombs like The Flash did better by a small margin and much more popular flicks like Batman vs. Superman did upwards of five times better with over $73 million in Brazil and Mexico.
Looking forward to taking my kids to see Blue Beetle. #RepresentationMatters #BlueBeetle pic.twitter.com/dJZxQxlWIO
— Zack Snyder (@ZackSnyder) July 30, 2023
What happened?
I think a variety of factors contributed to Blue Beetle bombing at the box office.
Followed a string of DC failures
The flick followed a string of DC failures at the box office including the recent The Flash movie, which is just a horrible film.
As mentioned above, Shazam: Fury of the Gods also bombed big-time, and DC films such as James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad and Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman 1984 weren’t watched by a lot of people, either.
Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam is actually the highest-grossing DC movie of the past eight DC films released, and you have to go all the way back to 2018 with the billion-dollar Aquaman movie to find a higher DC flick at the box office.
James Gunn to blame
The DCU reboot likely also impacted Blue Beetle, as James Gunn is rebooting the DCU.
Though James Gunn has confirmed Xolo Maridueña will continue on in the new DCU, fans were still left wondering why they should bother watching the Blue Beetle movie, much like both Fury of the Gods and The Flash.
Blame the Zack Snyder fans
The Snyder Verse fans could have also negatively affected the box office as they may have chosen to not see the movie to do the Zack Snyder DCEU getting canceled, particularly the Ben Affleck Batman and the Henry Cavill Superman.
There were plans to bring them all back but that all got wiped.
Poor writing and politics
Another factor could be the political nature of the movie as well as the questionable story which sees things such as the sister getting powers and the granny wielding a minigun, both of which came off as super cringe.
There is hope
I will say the special effects were done well and Xolo Maridueña is a great Blue Beetle and even George Lopez is tolerable, so when Xolo Maridueña returns, I think he will make a pretty good supporting character in other DC films from Gunn and company.
What they should to is continue to build up and develop Blue Beetle in the DCU with quality storytelling.
I look at Xolo as DC’s Peter Parker.
