After the two “IT” films, filmmaker Andy Muschietti dipped his toes in the superhero world with 2023’s “The Flash” – and the result was a mess.
The film scored mixed reviews and was a box-office bomb, becoming one of several very public misfires for the DC label, and with the Gunn-led reset known at that point, the audience didn’t show up or care for it.
Then you had the various issues with the film’s leading man, Ezra Miller, not to mention some overly ambitious timeline and multiverse shenanigans that resulted in some deeply questionable VFX throughout the film.
Now, out promoting the new prequel series “IT: Welcome to Derry,” Muschietti tells The Playlist he remains proud of the film, even as he acknowledged Miller’s off-screen controversies, the studio’s strong support of the film, and how the film became the target of the digital mob online:
“We just moved on and understood that sometimes there’s a headwind and a project that you dedicated a lot of work to, and we’re very proud of it. I think it’s a good movie. A lot of people did not see it. But you know how things are these days – people don’t see things, but they like to talk s— about it, and they like to jump on bandwagons. They don’t really know. People are angry for reasons that are unrelated to these things.
Of course, we had a publicity crisis with Ezra that is undeniable. And I’m not questioning that… This may seem immaterial now, but we also had so much support from the studio, really, at a point where they could have been like, you know, backing out because of all the issues we were having with publicity. And they went all in, and we all went all in. And again, we love the movie. We, you know, we gave it our blood, sweat, and tears all the way to the end. And I watched it, like a week ago, and loved it again.”
The film made $271.4 million at the box office from a reported budget of $200 million. Muschietti himself remains attached to helm the DCU’s Batman in “The Brave & The Bold,” but that project remains in early development with no script yet.
