Blue Beetle is Dead… Maybe 

The returns are in and they are bad for Blue Beetle. Barbie, which has been out for a month came in first this weekend. The worldwide gross is $45 million against a $100 million budget. Hollywood is officially upset with Latinos for not coming out to support “their” movie.  

Look I’m not Mexican, Cuban, or any other flavor of Latino but I’d certainly got to know a few of them better than any Hollywood Baizou when I was in the Marine Corps, and the Reyes family didn’t feel like a Mexican family to me. No Mexican father was going to be that calm and cool about losing his house as this one was. The writer only got the job because of his ethnicity but if you look at his track record, the only thing you see is crime stories. A tight-knit and bluntly conservative working-class family was completely beyond him. And in this day and age if a family is tight-knit then you know for damn sure it’s got real values as its core. 

It’s kind of sad when you think about it. A family film is exactly the kind of film that Tinsel Town is no longer capable of making, and for once they really wanted to. They just had no idea how. 

Anyway. There was an end-credit scene with a voiceover from Jason Sudeikis coming over the radio at the abandoned Blue Beetle lair claiming that he, which is Ted Kord is still alive. Everyone is already writing the eulogy for this character on the way to the ball bark.  

Except for me. 

In theory given the poor box office, this should be the last we see of Miguel from Cobra Kai’s iteration of Blue Beetle. Sure, James Gunn was going on at length about how this movie was now completely incorporated into the Gunnverse in a way that he wasn’t saying the Flash was. However, given the level of failure here, Gunn is under no real obligation to continue with the Jamie Reyes version of Blue Beetle. 

But… 

I’ve heard a couple of rumors that I regard as questionable but they scan when you consider James Gunn’s track record. 

First, that James Gunn has reserved a carve-out for Chris Pratt, and the character I keep hearing connected to Pratt’s name is Booster Gold. I can see it, Pratt does comedy and Booster Gold has a long history of being the kind of insecure blowhard with a heart of gold that Pratt excels at playing. Bringing on Pratt makes sense, Zaslav is certainly not going to question it given Pratt’s box office track record.  

However, when Booster Gold was at the height of his popularity it was when he was paired with Blue Beetle. Ted Kord’s Blue Beetle to be precise.  

Blue and Gold is exactly the kind of obscure but kitschy property Gunn has a history of being attracted to. A superhero comedy, buddy movie sounds like the kind of thing he’d make. 

That said, even if this is exactly what Gunn has in mind it may all come to nothing. Superman Legacy is due out next year and frankly, the tears will still be wet from Aquaman 2’s failure. Marvel has crashed and Marvel was the only thing boosting the DCU. Genre halo effect was what was keeping DC Films, if not above water, at least in sight of the surface. 

The halo is broken and Superman will have to support itself on its own merit.  

Developing.