‘Five Nights At Freddy’s’ Has Now Outgrossed ‘The Flash’ Globally

If Barbie and Oppenheimer weren’t enough to show you that 2023 is the generally year of the “not superhero” movies, perhaps this new item will change your mind. That would be the fact that Five Nights at Freddy’s has now outgrossed The Flash’s worldwide box office, hitting $271 million to The Flash’s $270 million.

The disparity went back to opening weekend when Freddy’s had an $80 million domestic US opening, even simultaneously debuting on a streaming service, while The Flash opened with $55 million.

But the real story is the budgets. The Flash cost $300 million with marketing on top of that, and it’s said to have resulted in a loss of $200 million overall for Warner Bros, one of the steepest in history. Freddy’s meanwhile, cost $20 million to make and has already more that 10x-ed its budget with the same total.

Budget comes into play a lot lately in situations like this. Even among the superhero genre, Blue Beetle performed poorly with its $120 million haul, but that was on a $100 million budget. The Marvels is currently at $120 million also, but on a $270 million budget, and it’s expected to end its run well under that.

Back to The Flash, it’s a wild situation, given that he was a major DC hero and it was billed as a sprawling, No Way Home-style crossover film with Michael Keaton’s Batman. But it ended up being a dying gasp of the DCEU, not the full end, that’s Aquaman 2, but a horrific misfire ahead of James Gunn’s takeover of the IP.

Five Nights At Freddy’s is a wild success, but importantly, a different type of one than we’ve seen. Barbie and Oppenheimer made loads of money and critics and audiences agreed they were great. With Freddy’s, critics hated it. It got a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes, but the “made for the fans” movie was a huge hit with the target fanbase of the game itself, hence much, much higher audience scores and his massive box office haul for such a small film.

Freddy’s has now sparked an upcoming series of films, reportedly at least two more, in an effort to replicate that kind of low budget success with an engaged fanbase. On the other side, the DCEU is about to die off entirely, and the new DCU will not surface until Superman Legacy in 2025. It’s been a wild year, and that’s just among these two films. There are half a dozen other stories like this.

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