‘Supergirl’ Loses Its Own Opening Weekend to ‘Toy Story 5’ as Friday Numbers Confirm a Soft Start
The opening day numbers are in for ‘Supergirl,’ and the picture they paint is not the one DC Studios was hoping for. The film grossed $18 million on its opening Friday including previews, placing it firmly in second place for the day and pointing toward an opening weekend in the $37 million to $42 million range, well below the studio’s original expectations.
‘Supergirl’ landed in second place on Friday across 3,602 theaters, with ‘Toy Story 5’ retaining the box office crown by pulling in $21 million domestically in its second weekend. The Pixar sequel is expected to win the full weekend by a significant margin, making this the rare scenario where a would-be superhero tentpole loses its opening weekend to a film already a week into its run.
The $18 million Friday figure includes the $7.8 million earned from Wednesday fan events and Thursday previews, meaning the film’s actual single-day walk-up number on its release date was closer to $10 million, and the weekend total is now tracking toward the floor of pre-release projections, which themselves had already been revised downward from an earlier estimate north of $55 million.
The reviews have been a meaningful drag. ‘Supergirl’ is sitting at 57% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes with a 77% audience score, a figure that sounds passable in isolation but in the context of the superhero genre, where audience scores routinely land in the high 80s and 90s, represents a weak showing. James Gunn’s ‘Superman’ drew a 90% audience score on its way to a $125 million opening last summer.
The divided reception has created real uncertainty about whether the film can recover through word of mouth, with analysts noting that a soft domestic start is only survivable if international markets carry the load, a scenario that already looks tenuous given early overseas numbers coming in below expectations.
The financial math behind the film makes the modest opening more consequential. ‘Supergirl’ carries a reported $170 million production budget, with marketing costs potentially bringing the total investment to around $295 million, meaning the film would need roughly $425 million worldwide by traditional break-even calculations, though Warner Bros. has floated $300 million as a more achievable internal benchmark.
The film does have a cushion that most studio releases lack: more than 80 sponsorship partners delivering over $100 million in combined media value through advertising, retail placement, and digital impressions, a figure that could meaningfully lower the actual break-even threshold regardless of what the theatrical gross ultimately looks like. Whether that safety net is enough to absorb a soft opening weekend will become clearer once Sunday’s final global numbers are tallied.
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