‘Supergirl’ Has Become DC’s Biggest Box Office Disaster in Over Two Decades
A year ago, DC Studios looked like it had finally found its footing. ‘Superman’ launched James Gunn and Peter Safran’s rebooted universe to strong reviews and a worldwide haul that crossed the $600 million mark, giving Warner Bros. Discovery real reason to believe its ambitious ten-year plan for the franchise could work.
That confidence carried directly into ‘Supergirl,’ the highly anticipated second chapter starring ‘House of the Dragon’ breakout Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El. The film arrived in theaters this summer following a lengthy promotional campaign, appearances from David Corenswet’s Superman and Jason Momoa’s Lobo, and hopes that it could expand the DCU’s audience beyond its flagship hero.
Those hopes have collapsed. ‘Supergirl’ has now been confirmed as the worst earning DC movie in twenty-two years, a distinction it takes from 2004’s much-maligned ‘Catwoman.’ The film is currently adding less than a million dollars a day at the domestic box office and has made just $108 million globally since its release.
The financial picture only gets bleaker when the budget is factored in. Warner Bros. and DC spent somewhere between $170 million and $200 million producing ‘Supergirl,’ then added another $120 million to $125 million on marketing, which means the film would need to clear roughly $300 million worldwide just to break even.
There is an important wrinkle in the Catwoman comparison, too. The Halle Berry film actually earned less in raw dollars back in 2004, closer to $82 million, but adjusted for inflation that total climbs to around $149 million. In real terms, that puts ‘Supergirl’ arguably below even ‘Catwoman’ as the weakest theatrical outing in DC history.
‘Supergirl’ now sits under the DCEU’s late era stragglers as well, trailing ‘Blue Beetle’ and ‘Shazam! Fury of the Gods,’ and it lines up closer to Sony’s ‘Madame Web’ than to anything resembling a modern DC hit. That is a jarring outcome for a movie that was supposed to build on ‘Superman’s’ momentum rather than undercut it.
The gap between the two DCU entries is stark. ‘Superman’ opened with strong reviews and eventually earned $618 million globally, while ‘Supergirl’ has landed miles short of that benchmark despite a similar scale of investment and promotion. DC Studios leadership has publicly framed the shortfall as a single disappointing chapter in a much longer franchise strategy rather than a sign that the entire reboot is in trouble, though the numbers give plenty of ammunition to skeptics.
Reviews for ‘Supergirl’ were mixed rather than uniformly negative, and much of the praise that did land was aimed squarely at Alcock, whose performance was frequently singled out as the film’s strongest element even by critics who found the script or effects underwhelming. That disconnect between a well-liked lead performance and a poorly performing movie has become one of the more debated storylines of the summer.
What do you think is the biggest reason 'Supergirl' underperformed at the box office?
Attention now shifts to what comes next for the DCU, with ‘Clayface’ set for an October release and Gunn’s own ‘Man of Tomorrow’ arriving next summer. Whether either film can shake off the shadow of ‘Supergirl’s’ historic underperformance may say a lot about how stable the franchise’s foundation really is.
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