‘Supergirl’ Second Weekend Nosedive Is Now One of the Worst Superhero Drops in Box Office History

The numbers are in, and they are as painful as the worst projections suggested. ‘Supergirl‘ earned just $3.6 million on its second Friday, representing an approximately 80% drop from its opening-day figure. The film is now heading for a second weekend total somewhere between $8.5 million and $10 million, tracking as the fourth-place finisher on a holiday frame it was never going to dominate, but the severity of the collapse is a different story entirely.

That kind of second-weekend implosion puts ‘Supergirl’ in company it absolutely does not want to be in. The drop ranks among the worst second-weekend falls for any superhero film in box office history, sitting just behind ‘Joker: Folie à Deux,’ which cratered 81% in its second frame in 2024, and ‘The Marvels,’ making this the third worst collapse for a comic book movie in the modern era.

The competitive context made it even worse. ‘Supergirl’ did not just lose its second weekend to ‘Minions and Monsters’ and a returning ‘Toy Story 5.’ It lost to ‘Young Washington,’ the Angel Studios historical biopic that opened with an estimated $16 to $17 million, surpassing the DC film despite being a faith-based indie about a Founding Father that critics only modestly embraced. Being outdone by a movie like that in your second weekend represents a category of failure that lands well beyond normal box office disappointment.

The math continues to point toward a major loss. The film entered the holiday weekend with $48.8 million domestically and $34.5 million internationally for a worldwide tally of $83.3 million. With a reported production budget of $170 million and marketing costs of roughly $120 million, the breakeven point sits at approximately $300 million globally, a target that is now looking increasingly unreachable. A Variety analysis projected losses of $100 million to $120 million, with the studio facing an even larger write-down if the film fails to reach the $200 million worldwide threshold before leaving theaters.

The production has another complication embedded in the story behind the screen. World of Reel has reported that James Gunn stepped in to take over ‘Supergirl’ post-production following creative differences with director Craig Gillespie, with competing cuts tested before the final version was locked. That detail has emerged into public view precisely as the film is in freefall, adding a behind-the-scenes narrative to a commercial catastrophe.

DC Studios co-head Peter Safran told the New York Times after the opening weekend that while the film did not meet expectations, it is “just one component of a broader, long-term strategy at DC Studios that we remain confident in.”

That confidence will be tested by whatever the final domestic total lands at, currently tracking well short of $100 million, and by ‘Clayface’ later this year, which carries a far more modest $40 million budget and may need to prove the franchise model still works on a smaller scale.

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