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DCU’s Blue Beetle in the same league as Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Thor: Love and Thunder & other weak CinemaScore CBM movies: ‘on par with WW84’

DCU’s Blue Beetle in the same league as Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Thor: Love and Thunder & other weak CinemaScore CBM movies: ‘on par with WW84’

The early acclaimed reception and fresh Rotten Tomatoes score for Blue Beetle are sadly not enough to get audiences’ expectations up for DC Studios’ first character, introduced as part of James Gunn‘s Gods and Monsters universe. The Xolo Maridueña starrer DCU film has landed a B+ CinemaScore leaving fans dismayed while detractors are blaming WBD’s lack of marketing & the comic book movie genre as a whole for releasing generic titles.

DC’s first Latino superhero flick is not off to a great start being compared to the likes of Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Thor: Love and Thunder – the lukewarm entries of 2023’s comic book movies. But some of the Blue Beetle Battalion stans seem to have anticipated the low cinema score by relating it to the weak opening weekend estimates.

The DCU feature earned a meager $3.3 million domestically from Thursday preview shows and is expected to pull $25-32M from the first three-day earnings. DC Studios’ previous entries The Flash and Shazam 2’s opening earnings are slightly above and were praised by critics and fans alike. However, Blue Beetle also shares similarities with the last two titles in failing to interest general audiences.

As box office reporter Luiz Fernando noted, Blue Beetle’s CinemaScore is on par with Wonder Woman 1984, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Black Adam and James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. Out of the aforementioned titles, only Doctor Strange 2 and Dwayne Johnson starrer DC film earned the big buck at the global box office.

While Black Adam’s earnings still bring up the debate over if the film falls under the profitable bracket or a loss for Warner Bros. Pictures – it still launched with a $143M global opening. Multiverse of Madness is the highest-earning title from MCU in 2023 with a $185M debut and a global run of $955M.

Other films with a B+ CinemaScore include Love and Thunder which is the second worst-rated score from Marvel Studios with Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania topping the list with B. Though in fairness, Blue Beetles pales in comparison to the marketing efforts that went in for the above-mentioned DC & Marvel title.

Disappointment among fans is at an all-time high but the Blue Beetle Battalion gang is hoping to amplify its social media reach to increase its performance in the following weeks of its theatrical run. With a $104M production budget, as revealed by its director Ángel Manuel Soto – there is hope for the film to either break even or turn profitable for studios and exhibitors. The Flash‘s BO failure is already estimated to have led to a $260M massive loss for WBD.

On the bright side of the conversation, some critics and fans noted that Blue Beetle has earned more than what the studio would’ve originally anticipated since it was a direct-to-streaming title for HBO Max. In any case, although a sequel for Blue Beetle may be tied down to the BO report – the character’s return has been assured by DCU chief James Gunn.

As of this writing, Blue Beetle has a 76% Tomatometer certified fresh out of 165 reviews. But the audience score stands at 92% though it is subject to change as more verified ratings pour in the following days.

Blue Beetle is currently in theaters.

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