Besides, if the Flash is so pop culture, don't you just need him to be the 'known superhero' to get the public attention to draw them into a movie with Hawkman and Plastic Man?
I think you need more than just one known superhero. They could get away with five big ones and two obscure choices, I think.
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You have to still maintain some bit of popularity in order to stay in pop culture. Otherwise, it just becomes an obscure reference. Star Wars is known to the public because it is still shown and watched on TV pretty regularly. Popeye is know to kids today because his cartoons are still being shown. Hell, I was watching Popeye, Tom & Jerry, and other cartoons that hadn't been in new cartoons for a least twenty years. They're known because they're still being shown to a mass audience.
I watched Popeye as a kid too, but they haven't shown his cartoons in TV for a long time, or at least they haven't down here. I know this because I'm working at a local TV station and when the dubbing of new Cartoon Network series was delayed, they had to show that awful "The New Adventures of Popeye" cartoon for a month. The guy in charge of kids programation sent everyone a memo complaining about the fact that the station picked such an old cartoon, stating (with figures and all) that the character hasn't been in TV for at least 15 years.
I like to bring up the Popeye incident with people to make fun of the limited budget we have at the TV station. I asked my little sister who Popeye was (hoping to get some laughs when she said she didn't know), but she said "it's the sailor who eats spinach". How did she know that? Probably because she heard or saw a reference to the character outside TV. Why would anyone reference a character that hasn't been on TV for such a long time? Because he's part of pop culture.
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I don't know how they do it in Chile, but that's not how it works here. In a time when it's just as easy to rent or buy DVD's and watch a movie in your home with your own surround sound system, people go to the movies because they're intrigued by the trailers and marketing campaign or what their friends tell them about a movie. Trailers sell movies. Put enough special effects and catchy one-liners in a trailer; and the audience will be talking about it for weeks, building up their own anticipation for the movie.
I swear I'm not just talking out of my ass. I had to read studios about all this for class, and guess in which country they were conducted. Most people, when asked, state that they generally know very little about a movie before they go see it. Some simply show up at the theatre for a good night out and see what looks good (it's like going to a restaurant: you don't anticipate the menu for weeks), and others go because of positive word of mouth. "My buddy Joe told me it was good." "Do you like horror movies?" "Oh, it's a horror movie?" Of all types of a trailers, the most effective ones are those stupid 20 second teasers they show on TV in the middle of American Idol and shit, which sell you a simple concept and an atmosphere. Needless to say, if the impression that teaser gave you happens to be incorrect, the public gets mad and the movie bombs. That's what happened with (I think) "Primeval", which looked like a serial killer movie and turned out to be about a crocodrile.
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The movie studio defines what the movie is to the public. It's only the people who are really in the know (i.e. the fans) who are turned off when they don't see exactly what they want. Look at The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Alan Moore didn't have Tom Sawyer or Dorian Grey in his book. Mina wasn't a vampire. Yet, that's how the movie went down, and the general public loved it. These characters had never been written together by their original authors or in the way they were. The movie studio defined to the public what LXG was, and they can do the same to JLA. If the general public can accept a grown up Tom Sawyer who works for a CIA like agency, or a Captain Nemo who is Indian, they can accept a JLA without Superman and Batman.
LoEG isn't a known concept, so they can treat it however they like. People would have only been upset if Tom Sawyer was Indian and Dr. Jekyll turned invisible.
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Anyway, doesn't your own argument that people don't know much about the movies they see mean they'd be more accepting of anything they're shown as long as it looks entertaining?
No, because knowing little doesn't translate into expecting little. It means that they're expecting that one bit of information they're aware of to be 100% accurate. If that wasn't the case, you could market a dense psychological drama with pictures of naked girls, use a picture of a pair of breasts in the poster, name it "BRITNEY SPEARS GETS NAKED" and it'd be a hit. It would have a strong opening weekend, but word of mouth would kill it.
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From Dusk Til Dawn cost about $10 million. US box office alone was over $24 million. By your own definition, it was a hit.
Not according to Box Office Mojo: it says the production budget was $19 million.
