It all seemed so positive for the reimagined and revitalized DC Universe and the gang at Warner Brothers just about 12 months ago. SUPERMAN had been released to strong acclaim and more than $600 million at the worldwide box office. A quick glance at Wikipedia reminds us exactly how, well, super it all was:
It is the tenth highest-grossing film of 2025,[289] the highest-grossing superhero film of that year, and the first DC film to surpass all Marvel films released within a single year since The Dark Knight in 2008. Umberto Gonzalez at TheWrap described this as a “stunning reversal of fortune… According to Variety, the film was expected to earn a theatrical profit of approximately $125 million,[291] while Bloomberg Businessweek and TheWrap both reported that the film earned over $100 million in profit through a combination of ticket sales, online home media rentals, and merchandise partnerships.
Heck, I even liked it enough to stay fully awake, get my fat ass into the theatre (the 3-D showing no less!) and overlook some of the more elitist and esoteric themes that overlord James Gunn was determined to shove down our throats.
But that momentum came to a screeching halt this past weekend as what we were teased in the closing credits last year, the reimagined SUPERGIRL, has reversed course and all but smashed into a mountain. Yesterday SCREEN RANT’s Brennan Klein soberly spelled out the disappointing datecdotes
Per TheWrap, as of Saturday morning, Supergirl is expected to hit the lower end of its projected range for its opening weekend at the domestic box office with a 3-day total between $38 and $40 million. This total, which sees the new movie debuting at No. 2 behind the sophomore frame of Toy Story 5, is less than a third of what Superman made during its own opening weekend. The David Corenswet picture took in $125 million during its first three days at the domestic box office.
This isn’t necessarily an unexpected result. Supergirl is a relatively untested theatrical presence. While Superman has been the title character (or part of the title group) in eight blockbuster movies since 1978, Supergirl has only had one previous movie. That would be 1984’s Supergirl, which was a $14.3 million flop. The new movie has already more than outgrossed its entire run, and is nearing its total inflation-adjusted box office haul of $45.5 million at the domestic box office alone.
But DEADLINE’s Anthony D’Alessandro was a lot less gentle with his post-mortem observations:
CinemaScore yesterday was a B-, which is lower than DC’s Ezra Miller tabloid impacted The Flash (B), Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (B), Ryan Reynolds’ 2011 bomb Green Lantern (B), Shazam: Fury of the Gods (B+), and Marvel Studios’ rock bottom The Marvels (B CinemaScore). Definite recommend on Screen Engine/Rentrak’s PostTrak is 52%, which is low for a planned summer tentpole of this magnitude…In a further deep-dive on PostTrak, men who showed up at 59% gave Supergirl a very low definite recommend at 45% while women at 41% were a bit better at 62%.
Forget for a moment the hard data, which since we’re not the guys tasked with showing the P&Ls for incoming management we at least aren’t duty bound to do. The qualitative discourse even among those core audiences is at best polarizing and seems to indicate a a level of toxicity that couldn’t have come at a worse time for all parties involved. IGN’s Alex Zalben gave that a deep dive yesterday morning:
Pretty much since the dawn of superheroes, one of the longest standing debates has been whether or not they should kill… over time, that debate — both with readers and eventually viewers, as well as with the characters in the books, TV shows, and movies — has become a central facet of superhero lore…Supergirl..dives head-first back into the debate with a plot that focuses on the title character (Milly Alcock) pairing up with a young girl named Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley) who wants to kill Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts) — a brigand, human trafficker, and piercing aficionado who murdered Ruthye’s entire family. Supergirl, meanwhile, wants to track down Krem because he has the antidote to a poison he used on Krypto the Superdog, and they now have 72 hours before the pup painfully dies.
Over the course of the one hour and 48-minute runtime, Ruthye swears she’s going to kill Krem while Supergirl repeatedly urges her away from that path, explaining that killing won’t make the pain go away; it will, in fact, ruin your life. There’s also a lot of discussion about the difference between being nice and being good, as well as perfect and kind… but all that gets thrown away when Supergirl murders Krem at the end of the movie.
And CBR’s Sean O’Connell points out how other liberties had been taken that haven’t gone over quite as well as perhaps some might have hoped:
The film, which is diving critics and fans, largely adapts the DC Comics storyline Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, as conceived by Tom King and Bilquis Evely. Except for a crucial change made by Gillespie and screenwriter Ana Nogueira that apparently had the full support of DC Studios head James Gunn. In Tom King’s comic, when it comes to Ruthye actually killing Krem of the Yellow Hills, the young girl chooses not to do it. She realizes that she is not a killer, and there has been too much killing already. Supergirl ALMOST kills Krem herself, but finally chooses not to.
Sitting down with CBR to discuss the new movie, (Craig) Gillespie explained: It was in the script from the get go. I met with James, and we talked about it, and James was adamant about it. I think it’s an amazing thing. To lean into – knowing the kind of movie that we’re making, and where her character is heading, that she has to go through this emotional journey. There’s no other logical conclusion to what she would do. And (the fact) that he doubled down on that, I loved.
Maybe the auteurs in charge were satisfied, but it’s clear that the most crucial audience segments for this film–and, given the timing, potentially the DCU franchise itself–were not. And even the positives that a clearly predisposed Manohla Dargis cited in her NEW YORK TIMES review last week were tinged with regret:
For the most part, though, Supergirl is just another young, alienated extraterrestrial grappling with some eternal existential hurdles, some seriously far out. She’s naturally appealing, and Alcock makes her all the more so. A few times early in “Supergirl,” its heroine looks like a mess — a beautifully styled and scrupulously photographed one, true, but a wreck nevertheless. She likes to party hard, this chick, and will slam down drinks as heedlessly as any bro on a bender before crawling into bed alone on her artfully groovy, dishabille spaceship. When she finally wakes, she’s trying to swat away her frisky dog, Krypto, and protect her eyes from the morning light with mod, oversized Jackie O-style shades. There’s a reason that she drinks heavily, or so the movie insists, even as it keeps squeezing more comedy than pathos out of her intemperance.
The …movie… announces its tone almost at once with a tight shot of Krypto urinating on a newspaper photo of Superman (David Corenswet). It’s a brief, ostentatiously silly moment that announces that this isn’t another Superman movie even if, of course, it is, because the Man of Steel will always be the headliner. The filmmakers are clearly trying to put a bit of distance between these superheroes by playing it light and irreverent. That they’re sullying DC’s marquee attraction — one that Gunn and company have redefined as a sweetly cornball, old-fashioned hero — is definitely a choice. That they haven’t done Supergirl any real favors in doing so is another.
Jeez, if this is how someone who can actually identify with the lead character’s life choices feels, can you fathom how unlikely I am to even want to seek this out on HBO Max?
Truth be told the SUPERGIRL franchise was always an afterthought and an underachiever thoroughout the nearly nine decades that anything Super has existed. It took twenty years for the character to be introduced, her storyline was reduced to short vignettes even in the older cartoon versions, the aforementioned theatrical flop speaks for itself and the Melissa Benoist-fronted TV series that relied heavily on LGBTQ+ themes, while it eventually limped through six seasons as part of the CW’s IP-heavy lineup its outsized failure to make it as initially intended as a tentpole franchise for CBS and demonstrated its ability to stand on its own two feet was nowhere near optimal.
So Burbank braintrust, can you potentially explain why you chose this to embark on a path so arduous and complicated as your immediate followup to all you were able to accomplish with SUPERMAN in the first place?
You really don’t need to answer that; I’ve already made up my mind. But you might want to start tap-dancing to the folks who will be advising the Ellisons because you’ll need their support–not to mention a whole lotta marketing bucks–to coax the naysayers back next summer for SUPERMAN: MAN OF TOMORROW. Nepobaby David has reportedly visited their set as production is ongoing right now and supposedly liked what he saw. Goody. Now go figure out a way to drag the Karas of the world out of their grungy lofts, splash on some unisex perfume, scarf some protein coffee and give you all the second chance you’re gonna need. Assuming you even get it, of course.
Until next time…