The Flash has been a disaster for DC and Warner Bros. The Ezra Miller-led superhero film is securing a record as one of the biggest box office flops in the business. There are a lot of factors that led us to that point, but Warner Bros. attempts to get any money out of the film before the DC cinematic universe reboots once more have reached a new low: the blockchain.
Warner Bros. Digital Collectibles, the company’s official NFT/Web3 branch, posted today that it’s rolling out The Flash Web3 Movie Experience, which is the first “new” movie to be released on WB’s blockchain nonsense service after it released similar “experiences’’ for older films like The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and the 1978 Superman film. The limited edition Flash experience includes weird interactive environments you can swipe around on your phone based on locations from the movie, as well as digital collectibles like cards and models. Packaged into the whole deal is a digital copy of the film, access to bonus features, and all the normal shit you’d expect from buying a movie through a digital service.
None of these things are inherently objectionable, but when it’s all tied into a manufactured scarcity based on a market that has already come and gone, it reeks of desperation to get any return on a movie that has bombed in the usual markets.
There are a lot of reasons for The Flash taking a nosedive. On top of Miller’s frequent controversies and actual crimes, DC has already announced it’s rebooting its film universe again under The Suicide Squad developer James Gunn, and is still releasing a movie in a defunct continuity. It also sounds like the movie is just not that spectacular, and fans have had a pretty good live-action Flash series for almost a decade. I think we’re just good on the scarlet speedster these days, and given everything else, people just didn’t show up. And I’d be very, very surprised if a Web3 experience changes that.