Shazam! Fury of the Gods has become one of the biggest superhero movie flops at the box office, and it seems like Warner Bros. Discovery allowed it to happen. It's not uncommon for studios to dump movies in theaters and allow them to perform poorly at the box office when there's a lack of faith in the product, but Shazam! Fury of the Gods was far better than the type of movie that usually happens to, so it's not clear if the studio truly lacked faith and intentionally dumped the movie, but it raises questions about why Warner Bros. Discovery didn't do more to market the movie.
James Gunn's impending partial reboot of the DC movie universe puts the entire franchise into an uncomfortable limbo. Surely Gunn and the studio want all the movies that were greenlit and produced under the previous regime to do well at the box office, but they also want to avoid investing too much time and energy into aspects of the universe that aren't going to be relevant after Gunn's new DC movies start arriving, beginning with Superman: Legacy in 2025.
Shazam: Fury of the Gods Doesn't Fit in James Gunn's New DCU Movie Plan
When initially announcing part of the first chapter of his new film slate, collectively titled "Gods and Monsters," Gunn acknowledged Shazam! Fury of the Gods, but said "Shazam has always been off kind of in his own part of the DCU," but said The Flash is "a fantastic movie that I really love," and also called Blue Beetle "a fantastic film." The enthusiasm in his social media posts about each of these movies has a similar disparity in tone, which really makes his lukewarm promotion of Shazam! Fury of the Gods stand out even more.
Marketing For Shazam 2 Lacked Confidence
Despite the moderate box office success and strong reviews of the first Shazam! movie, the marketing for Shazam: Fury of the Gods felt light and gun-shy. Despite the sequel directly continuing part of the story from the first movie that wasn't highlighted and the lack of clear ties to the franchise outside of superficial name-drops made it feel very generic, which was a similar problem faced by the MCU's marketing for The Eternals. When marketing did take big swings, it outright spoiled Wonder Woman's big third-act cameo, which broadcast a lack of confidence.
Warner Bros. Discovery may see the mixed reviews and poor box office as validation for the decision to let Shazam! Fury of the Gods fail, but the movie still had really strong audience reviews, which is often a better indicator of a movie's potential for box office success, as seen recently with The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which also had mixed critic scores and a high audience score in Rotten Tomatoes. It'll be interesting to see if WBD and James Gunn give other upcoming DC movie like The Flash, Blue Beetle, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom more enthusiastic marketing support than Shazam! Fury of the Gods.
