The Flash will be lucky to come third at the box office this weekend

Here’s a short list of words and phrases you don’t want appearing in stories about the second week in theaters of your big, expensive superhero movie: “Catastrophic.” “Over 70 percent decline.” “Sad.” And of course, “Morbius-the thing is.”

And yet, that is exactly the fate he faces. The flash this weekend, as Friday night’s box office figures confirmed early projections that speedster Barry Allen was about to plunge off a cliff in his second weekend on the market, and not one of those that forgive looney tunesstyle cliffs that give you a minute to float in the air before reality crashes down; no, this fool is going to fall.

Specifically, the Warner Bros. superhero movie is expected to take a surprising third place in sales this weekend, behind Pixar movies. Elementary—which is holding on to audiences much better, despite a bad opening weekend— and Sony Through the Spider-Versenow in its fourth weekend. In fact, Flash might have a hard time even landing on thirdgiven that the new comedy by Jennifer Lawrence No hard feelings you are doing better than expected and, again, Flash it’s doing much worse.

Specifically, Andy Muschietti’s superhero movie is (by THR) expected to gross around $15 million this weekend, which means it’s seeing a drop of at least 70 percent in a single week. It’s bad enough that she moved Hollywood journalist Matthew Belloni notice that The flash it’s now in the running for the ignominious title of “worst box office slump for a superhero movie this century” with, you guessed it, Sony’s Morbius. (Which fell from $39 million to $10 million in the span of a single week when it opened to many memes, but few tickets sold, last April.)

The only silver lining for Warner Bros.: stuck in the lousy position of having to promote a movie from a former DC Films regime that came with a lot of baggage both creatively and publicly, and now is laying bricks in terms of audience retention, is that the film is making a bit better internationally; $99 million in its opening weekend, including $13 million from China, means the $200 million movie might not actually lose any money, at least.