Blue Beetle on Track To Beat Shazam! Fury of the Gods at the Box Office

DC’s stretch of mediocre box office performances continued earlier this month. Following a disappointing return from Black Adam and complete financial bombs from Shazam! Fury of the Gods and The Flash, DC returned to cinemas this August with Blue Beetle. The Xolo Maridueña-led picture entered its theatrical run with seemingly everything against it: lapsed DC fans, an imminent cinematic universe reboot, unwavering competition, and more. Despite these setbacks, Blue Beetle outperformed its initial opening weekend projections but still fell short of its final estimates. As of this writing, Blue Beetle currently sits at $81.8 million dollars worldwide.

Blue Beetle Can Still Beat Shazam! Fury of the Gods

Current projections have Blue Beetle ending its theatrical run with a worldwide box office haul between $140 and $170 million dollars. If Blue Beetle meets the absolute low end of those estimates, it will surpass Shazam! Fury of the Gods‘s total of $133.8 million dollars.

Barring an unforeseen surge, Blue Beetle will fall far short below The Flash. That Ezra Miller-led project brought in $268.5 million dollars worldwide, which itself was considered to be a flop due to its big production budget and marketing costs to boot.

Blue Beetle Review

Despite its lackluster box office performance, Blue Beetle has been just about a universal hit with fans and critics alike.

“If DC fans are hoping for a solid, uncomplicated (no continuity knots), and most of all fun DC superhero movie that even teens and kids can enjoy –  Blue Beetle may very well be the first DC film in a decade that can deliver on all those fronts,” ComicBook.com’s Kofi Outlaw writes in his 3.5 star review. “That is an achievement in its own right.”

Will Blue Beetle Return?

One month before Blue Beetle hit theaters, head of DC Studios James Gunn confirmed that Xolo Maridueña’s Blue Beetle “and a handful of other characters” will continue in his rebooted DC cinematic universe.

“We are part of the universe, we are part of the world, we are part of the plans that they have been creating for the future instalments of the DCU,” Blue Beetle director Angel Manuel Soto said in an interview earlier this summer. “But we are not tied to all the films from the past. Yes, our movie lives in the world where superheroes exist. But that doesn’t mean that a certain event, or certain alliance, or certain things from the past dictate where our film is going.”

Blue Beetle is currently in theaters.