#Box Office: Ezra Miller’s ‘The Flash,’ Pixar’s ‘Elemental’ Get Iced in Openings

Argh.

Such was the refrain across Hollywood as opening weekend estimates circulated for DC’s highly anticipated The Flash and Pixar’s Elemental, which are debuting domestically over the long Juneteenth holiday weekend. (It’s also Father’s Day on Sunday.)

Starring Ezra Miller in the titular role, Warner Bros. and DC’s The Flash is anything but flashy in the opinion of moviegoers. The film earned an estimated $55.1 million for the three days and projected $64 for the four days, notably behind expectations.

The Flash had hoped for a three-day start of at least $70 million so as to come in ahead of such disappointing DC titles as Black Adam, which collected $67 million in its first three days.

The studio’s leadership has been hyping The Flash for months, with Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and DC Studios co-chief James Gunn proclaiming it is the greatest superhero movie they’ve ever seen. Many critics don’t agree with the assessment; the pic currently has a 67 percent Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes. A bigger problem: Audiences gave the movie a mediocre B CinemaScore (as a way of comparison, Elemental received an A).

While superhero fare often skews heavily male, The Flash is even more so than usual. On Friday, for example, 73 percent of ticket buyers were male.

Box office pundits are divided as to whether Ezra Miller’s off-screen woes are impacting the film’s performance. Miller was arrested multiple times in 2022 and was the subject of several controversies, culminating in the actor issuing a statement in August of last year apologizing for their behavior and saying they would receive help for “complex mental health issues.” Miller walked the red carpet at the movie’s premiere but has otherwise been absent from doing publicity for The Flash.

Competition from Sony holdover Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is another issue for The Flash, as well as for Elemental.

Now in its third weekend, the animated Spidey earned a hearty $27.8 million for the three-day weekend and an estimated $32.4 million for the four days for a domestic total of $285 million through Monday. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, placing No. 4, is another competitor.  

In the Andy Muschietti-directed Flash, Miller stars in dual roles as alternate-timeline versions of heroic speedster Barry Allen, with Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck making splashy returns in their respective Batman roles (in Keaton’s case, it’s a character he hasn’t played since 1991). Sasha Calle stars as Supergirl, while Michael Shannon reprises his role as General Zod from the 2013 feature Man of Steel.

DC was counting heavily on The Flash to improve its standing after the tepid showing of Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Black Adam.

Ditto for Pixar, which has Elemental opening this weekend. Those hopes were dashed as the family film quickly fell flat at the box office at a new low for the storied animation studio, which was already suffering. Many pundits worry that original animated IP is no longer a theatrical proposition, fueled by the former regime at Disney sending several Pixar movies straight to streaming during the pandemic.

Elemental earned an estimated $29.5 for the three-day weekend, the lowest wide weekend debut ever for a Pixar title outside of Toy Story, which started off with $29.1 million nearly three decades ago, not adjusted for inflation. (Toy Story, of course, went on to make cinematic and box office history. Elemental isn’t expected to do the same.) Overseas, Elemental earned $17 million from its first 17 markets.

The hope now is that Elemental will parlay its A CinemaScore into long legs at the box office.

Directed by Peter Sohn (The Good Dinosaur), Elemental is set in Element City, where fire, water, land and air residents live together. The film’s themes include connection, celebrating differences and finding one’s place in the world.

The story follows Ember (Leah Lewis), a tough, quick-witted and fiery young woman whose friendship with a sappy, go-with-the-flow guy named Wade (Mamoudou Athie) challenges her beliefs about the world they live in, where “elements don’t mix.”

Tim Story’s The Blackening, about a group of Black friends who decided to spend the holiday weekend at a remote cabin only to find themselves trapped with a twisted killer, debuted to an estimated $6 million. The film rounded out the top five.

Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City made headlines at the specialty box office, where it launched in six theaters in New York and Los Angeles before expanding nationwide next weekend. The Focus Features posted a three-day, per-theater location average of $132,211 the best showing since La La Land in 2016 ($176,000)

Numbers will be updated again Monday morning.

More to come.

June 18, 7:30 a.m.: Updated with revised estimates.

This story was originally published June 17 at 8:41 a.m.