The Flash failed because women “aren’t interested” in the superhero, its director says

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Andy Muschietti has talked about the box office gloom of The Flash. He has some slightly odd reasons, including the lack of women in the audience.


When The Flash finally arrived in cinemas in 2023, it debuted with a sustaind blitz of hype that memorably included a grand claim by Warner Bros chief David Zazlav that it was 'the best superhero film’ that he’d ever seen. The Flash was not the best superhero film that anybody had ever seen, including Zazlav (unless of course the head of one of Hollywood’s most storied studios doesn’t watch many films?) and after delays and all sorts of public problems, the film underperformed critically and commerically. In our review, James Harvey did call it 'the best superhero movie of that week’, so there’s that accolade, at least.

Andy Muschietti, the film’s director has publicly offered his take on why The Flash failed to connect with audiences and in the ‘out of touch with reality’ stakes, it’s not too far behind David Zaslav’s take on the film.

Speaking on  Argentinian radio station Radio TU (and translated by two seperate outlets, FlashLegacyBR and GeekVibesNation), the director offered this take:

“Among all the others reasons, because it wasn’t a movie that appealed to all four quadrants …It failed at that. When you spend $200 million making a movie, Warner wants to bring even your grandmother to the theaters. And I found out in private conversations that a lot of people just don’t care about The Flash as a character. [Particularly] the two female quadrants, there are a lot of women who aren’t interested in Flash as a character. All that is going against the film I’ve learned.”

Let’s put aside for a second that the TV version of the character on the CW network was successful for almost a decade and has plenty of fans who may categories themselves in the, er, ‘female quadrants’.

Let’s also put aside the fact that Sasha Calle’s Supergirl character gave the film a character that might have also have been overlooked in Muschietti’s thoughts.

Let’s even forget that the presence of Michael Keaton reprising his role as Batman from the 1989 film meant that this superhero flick made this movie ripe for audiences of an older vintage too.

The notable thing here is that Muschietti is claiming to be leaning on ‘private conversations’ to justify his take on the why the film didn’t land with audiences rather than acknowledging what most already suspect: The Flash was a botched project because of many reasons (all of which are explored in this episode of the Film Stories Podcast). Quadrants were the least of its problems .

Muschietti’s desire not to throw the studio behind the film under the bus may be understandable – particularly given that he may or may not be working on a new Batman film with the very same people. But if he’s going to talk about The Flash's failure to ignite with audiences, he’s going to need a far better reason than this one. A chat about the film’s star, Ezra Miller, wouldn’t hurt, for a start.

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