The Flash had a disappointing opening weekend at the box office when it opened last week, grossing only $55 million domestically against a $200 million dollar budget. Now in the second week of its release, it’s dropped off even more. Since this movie and its parent studio, Warner Brothers, are completely cursed these days, I felt more than a little bit of Schadenfreude. They’re on track to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. Would the studio have been better off shoving the movie onto “Just Max” or not releasing it at all? Walk with me as we learn just how badly this movie tanked on its second weekend, courtesy of Coming Soon:

The Flash may end up losing Warner Bros. $200 million at the end of its box office run.

The new DC superhero movie starring Ezra Miller as Barry Allen/The Flash and Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman has premiered in theaters. During its opening weekend, it grossed an underwhelming $55 million at the domestic box office. In its second weekend, that dropped 72% to a mere $15.3 million, with some pundits already predicting this will be a box office bomb.

According to Luiz Fernando, the film is estimated to earn $280-310 million globally in its theatrical run. When pitted against The Flash’s $200-220 million production budget, $150 million in marketing, and the fact that studios don’t take all of their box office haul, the movie may lose $200 million for Warner Bros. Fernando believes they may have lost less money by releasing it on Max or not releasing it at all.

[From Coming Soon]

We been knew, as they say. Why WB released this film while canning Batgirl, I will never understand. Ezra Miller’s behavior has been heinous for years. The fact that David Zaslav didn’t see the writing on the wall after Miller was out there on a crime spree for months getting restraining orders and felony burglary charges… it just shows what a bad leader Zaslav is. In case anyone had any doubts. A combination of superhero and multiverse fatigue, overexposure of the character (The Flash TV show was on the CW forever!) and a deeply problematic star? That’s box office poison for sure. But these jokers asked for it, the second they took their bottom line more seriously than whatever crimes their star was committing.

To borrow a phrase from a band I loved in middle school, the only thing worse than beating a dead horse is betting on it. That’s exactly what Warner Brothers did. They bet on something that was sure to fail and what did it get them? I know the sunken cost fallacy is very hard to override psychologically, but if there were ever a time to cut one’s losses, it was with this movie. While we’re here I’d just like to say that Batgirl‘s star, Leslie Grace, is by all accounts a lovely young lady. Batgirl also cost about $90 million before marketing. I’m not a math genius, but some back-of-the-napkin calculations reveal that it would have been much easier to make back $90 million at the box office than $200 million with a disgraced star.

Photos via Instagram/WB and credit Avalon.red