Supergirl Opening Raises Question: What Superheroes Can Still Rule the Box Office?

The opening weekend numbers for the second feature film in the revamped DC Universe were… not good. To put it gently. Supergirl, the Craig Gillespie-directed and James Gunn-produced spinoff about the Woman of Tomorrow, suffered a grim debut when it opened over the weekend to an estimated $38 million in the U.S. across three days (plus Thursday night previews), and $68 million worldwide.

To put that in perspective, this is not even a third of the domestic opening enjoyed by Gunn’s Superman reboot last summer ($125 million), and even below the lowest of projections, which prognosticators initially pegged as opening potentially north of $60 million a few weeks ago. Yet those forecasts kept dropping as days passed, especially following the divisive film reviews last week. The final tally ultimately ended up though even beneath recent superhero movie washouts that killed their prospective franchises: Black Adam ($67 million), The Marvels ($46 million), Morbius ($39 million), and The Flash ($55 million), albeit that last one, along with the DCEU, was dead on arrival.

Putting aside whatever you think of Milly Alcock’s Supergirl—personally I think the movie got a raw deal in the media feeding frenzy and am in the camp with Hideo Kojima—these are ghastly numbers for the all-new DC Studios, which set Supergirl up with a (seemingly) audience-winning cameo in last year’s Superman relaunch, and has in turn positioned the movie to lead right into next year’s Superman: Man of Tomorrow. There might be home media life after box office death for a movie like this, but in there and now, the only real question quickly becomes why… as well as what does it mean for the future of DC Studios and superhero movies writ large?

Unfortunately, there is inevitably going to be a loud and noxious social media contingent gloating about how audiences allegedly will not show up for women-led superhero movies. There will also be a narrative that would seek to blame Gunn’s shepherding of the new DC Studios since the producer greenlit and championed the screenplay by Ana Nogueira. While we imagine WB’s imminent new owners in the Ellison family will be very curious about what comes next for DC Studios, it would be wildly presumptuous to write off an entire studio due to one film. (Though the pressure just visibly doubled on next summer’s Superman sequel.)

If we had to try to read the tea leaves about the schadenfreude Supergirl has been met with, however, then the mere fact there’s so much anecdotal online pleasure in Supergirl’s disastrous launch suggests the climate in general for superhero movies has drastically changed… to the point where we very well could be heading back to a pre-Avengers, turn of the 21st century era where the only capes and cowls that succeed are the multigenerational brands most children, parents, and even grandparents recognize and have a shared fondness for: Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and let me also underline Wonder Woman.

Indeed, despite all the troglodytes with blood in their mouth, baying at another woman-led superhero movie failing at the box office, there was a time not so long ago when the Gal Gadot-fronted Wonder Woman of 2017 opened beyond expectations with $103 million (about $141 million today). That movie went on to more than quadruple its debut in its domestic run—an extreme rarity in the modern world, especially in the superhero genre.

Admittedly, this was a different time, as perhaps demonstrated by the fact that  two years later the Brie Larson-led Captain Marvel did even better when it opened to $153 million and grossed $1 billion worldwide. An argument could be made that Supergirl is a structurally and emotionally sounder movie than the heavily reedited and reshot Captain Marvel, but in the glow of Marvel Studios at the height of its popularity, and between Avengers endgame epics, that film largely got a pass much like how Ant-Man movies or Thor: The Dark World ended up with “fresh” Rotten Tomatoes scores and healthy box office runs. But that is my point. The audience perception of the genre has changed a lot in the past nine years, which is demonstrable when comparing the high interest in Captain Marvel versus its sequel The Marvels. That 2023 movie opened with an eye-watering 70 percent drop compared to Captain Marvel‘s domestic debut. In other words: before word of mouth could come predominantly into play, many audiences that turned up in 2019 decided to give the sequel a skip four years later.

I’m sure the incel community would blame it on cooties, but that hardly washes when one also considers the underperformances of Black Adam, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Kraven the Hunter, and Captain America: Brave New World over the last five years. The first Momoa Aquaman also crossed $1 billion in 2018 and got (almost preposterously) an “A-” CinemaScore. The sequel of the bro-rific movie still opened to $28 million five years later. Meanwhile even some of the recent “successes” are relatively muted, with Marvel’s last attempt at a quirky team-up film following C-level heroes you mostly never heard of (unless you watch all the Disney+ shows), Thunderbolts*, grossing just $382 million just last summer, less than half of what the first Guardians of the Galaxy did more than a decade earlier.

The idea that superhero movies are still the safest bet in Hollywood, and that capes and cowls are king, is increasingly becoming an antiquated relic of the 2010s when Marvel’s First Family in the Fantastic Four: First Steps wasn’t able to crack $600 million worldwide last summer despite being a solid film, and even the widely well-received Superman just barely cracking that ceiling.

There is a small but vocal segment of fandom that seems eager to see the DC Universe be rebooted again after only two entries in the Gunn era. What I’m not sure is clear to those fans yet, but might be vivid this Monday in Hollywood, is that the days of shared interconnected universes where every character is a lucrative franchise are probably over. If this DCU goes down, there probably won’t be anything similar for a long, long time. If ever. Whether the culprit is oversaturation due to an excess of streaming shows and movies in the 2020s, said quality of many of those movies and most of those shows, generational turnover where Gen Z doesn’t want to like the same things their parents and grandparents do, or some combination of all of the above is almost moot.

What seems likely, however, is that next month Spider-Man: Brand New Day will still make a killing at the box office—and Superman: Man of Tomorrow next year will probably still do solidly next summer. The mere fact the next Avengers movie also is getting Iron Man back (even as a different character) probably also puts that in the sure-thing camp. But I’d be more worried about the prospects of Booster Gold or the next MCU franchise-starter that can’t afford to bring back an actor 15-20 years after their first MCU dance. If that proves prudent, it isn’t so much who’s wearing the cape, but what the cape is. And very soon, we could be back to the days of Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, Black Panther, and maybe Wolverine movies. And of course Wonder Woman.