Supergirl 2026
Supergirl finally tawdles to $100,470,000 worldwide – The Numbers
Behind the scenes of the Supergirl bomb – Hollywood Reporter
Gunn and [director] Gillespie had creative differences over the direction of the movie, numerous sources tell The Hollywood Reporter, and the film never found its footing in the post-production process. The test scores, which are counted on a scale out of 100 points, never escaped the 60s, according to multiple insiders. Another insider said the movie’s top score was 70...."
Disaster at the box office
I suspect that DC/Warners knew they were heading into a lousy return on investment because of something unrelated to the movie itself: I saw very little, almost nothing in the way of retail store promotion for the film. No displays of Supergirl action figures, t-shirts, stuffy dolls, none of the usual cheap stuff cranked out on licensed properties that brings in royalty checks (See the top of the page for the lone exception I've seen as of July 9, 2026). My local comic book store has had a whole display stand up with Supergirl comics (bagged-boarded vintage to recent) and graphic novels, the only problem is, the display looked the same week and after week through half of May into June, that is, the items weren't moving, they were the same archaeological artifacts on display week after week.
"Critical, Audience And Box Office Disaster" – Forbes
Why did Supergirl fail? Asks Forbes' Paul Tassi:
You can make the argument that even if Supergirl was a better movie, it still probably would have underperformed. Having Supergirl go second after Superman in this precarious DCU launch window felt like a mistake at baseline..."
The easiest debunking of this accusation is that if a film is so good, that is, innovative and entertaining toward a mass audience, the main character popularity doesn't matter because the film makes the character work. A good example of this is something from James Gunn himself, Guardians of the Galaxy, which at the time before its release seemed like a long shot based on the property itself because it was an unknown outside of Marvel Comics aficionados. But that film introduced a new stylistic way to present a super-team inside of a tension plot, and it had an array of funny elements and especially comical characters to lard humour over the proceedings while the main tension was a serious contest between the heroes and the bad guys. It also had the Marvel-Disney machinery behind it before that machinery had become tainted in much of the popular consciousness, which is to say, the brand presenting the film had a lot of trust. Not the case anymore for either Warners/DC or Marvel/Disney.
Director Craig Gillespie ... Supergirl often plays like a poor James Gunn impression
..."
It would be good to know how much the DCU superstructure of bosses, which includes James Gunn himself, forced how this film was shaped. It isn't exactly a secret that producers can "cast" directors without any intention of allowing the director to actually "direct" the movie. Instead they have a generic list of attributes they want injected into the film (pop tunes, opportunities to sell toys, scenes that imitate other successful films), like the ingredients for making a cake, and the "director" has to make all that work while simultaneously trying to create a coherent film that has some sort of artistic integrity. At that point the director has to be a magician, too, in order to sucker the bosses who are determined to sabotage the project with things the film can't carry and be entertaining at the same time. I suspect that's simply too much for a "director" to please the bosses and then somehow please the real audience, the popcorn eaters.
Writer Ana Nogueira ... A fantastic script could have helped save this film, but a passable one didn’t cut it..."
Internet punditry claims Nogueira shouldn't have been chosen because she simply doesn't have the depth of experience, or familiarity with niche comicdom to write a good script. The thing about "passable" scripting is that an AI can write a functional script that has all the standard plot arrangements and the perfunctory dialogue that massages plot points and moves the subject and characters to the ending. A clever or inspired human script writer, though, can make an otherwise mundane film into something that crackles with a human element that humans can respond to. The question might be, can a decent script survive within the factory manufacturing process that is producing these films that flop? The answer seems self-evident.
Clayface and Lanterns are the next tests later this year, and DC cannot afford a repeat of what happened here..."
The future looks pretty iffy for superhero films. However, the next Spider-Man film (July) is expected to pull down a billion just like the previous Spider-Man films. If it does so while the DCU continues to dwell in a fallow box office, that'll be a clear indication of something about the audience out there that is willing to be entertained with superhero films, and the filmmakers who simply can't make an entertaining superhero film. Thus the two parties never meet in the theaters seats where the popcorn is eaten.
Supergirl ain't flying, it's crawling
Supergirl domestic at $38 million...DC/Warners planned on $50 million – Hollywood Reporter
The situation: this film has a reported $170 million production budget, an unknown amount spent on marketing (probably another $75 million?) but currently the total worldwide earnings reported put it at poor $68 million in total. The break even for this film likely is $400 to $500 million globally (if the usual arrangement of movie theaters keeping half of ticket sales is in play). Is that doable?
With Supergirl heading into a July 4th weekend, that will probably help a lot for a few days while huge numbers of people across America off work and family groups are seeking fun entertainment together. The current problem (meagre earnings) might dissipate, that is, unless word of mouth is really bad, confirming the online critical consensus. That will doom Supergirl to a quick fade out like Masters of the Universe, which recently appeared, made $106 million worldwide (against a $170 million production budget) and then evaporated from theaters.
Heading into the weekend, the Warner Bros. and DC Studios film was targeting a domestic start of around $50 million to $55 million, which already would have been a soft launch for such a big-budget tentpole...."
Variety.com
On the other hand, the Variety article says that, despite certain films flailing when tossed out into the world to find an audience, in general cinema is enjoying its best earnings since covid hit, with only 1.7% behind 2019 numbers. Don't know if that ratio calculates in the differences in ticket prices and the big influence of inflation since 2019. Toy Story 5 is the weekend's top film, pulling some $70 million after debuting last weekend with a super-respectible $160 million start. This next weekend is Minions and Monsters coming out, another crowd-grabbing animated film.
Was Supergirl doomed from the start?
Regarding word-of-mouth, the online world is mostly kicking Supergirl right in the shins. If superhero movies are going survive, the movie studios have got to make some kind of peace with the right-out-of-the-blocks "kill" campaigns that build up around "big" movies when either the stars say cranky things about the fanbase, or the film product itself trumpets elements that are going to get it shellacked by an army of pundit/critics that are massed into the fanosphere like a gauntlet.
When Supergirl started out a few days ago, some online critical platforms were already racking up over a million views parleying the opinion the film was simply awful. Wishing that those voices would go away is the same as wishing they don't matter: neither is going to happen.
...Supergirl became even more challenged over night with a $10.7M Saturday (-41% from Friday/previews), which is turning into a $38M domestic opening. Again, that isn’t the lowest 3-day start for a DC title, but it’s not good for a cosmos-hopping movie that cost $170M-$186M net before global spend. Supergirl‘s stateside start is lower than Disney/Marvel’s lowest, The Marvels ($46.1M) and it’s God awfully close to that DC disaster, Joker: Folie a Deux ($37.6M). Worldwide was horribly low ..."
– Deadline Hollywood
One thing in common with all three of these movies is the merciless, castigating reviews online that heralded their crushingly small total earnings. Superman, last years big summer superhero film, had a disappointing box office, but it was at least in a range where the argument became "did it make enough money to be truly profitable?" (the answer to that is most likely "yes") versus "how badly did it crash and burn?" which would have made sure Supergirl never even got made since it is a sideways sequel to the other film.
Mollifying the powerful online voices that are philosophically aligned against Hollywood can't be done, but film projects can sow confusion and split-partisanship with those same voices by not picking a fight with them, understanding what the expectations for failure are and why those expectations have become erstwhile standards across the freelance pundit/critical world. Whatever feeling there may have been in the film-making world that marketing can bulldoze over the way the online world is now arranged has turned out to be, as Sean Connery used to say, "a bucket of smoke."
Excuses
Is Supergirl proof feminist superhero films are still 'taboo'?
– India Times
Any explanation for Supergirl failing that bases it on the characters gender won't explain why Captain Marvel made $1.1 billion, and Wonder Woman made $816 million. Suicide Squad (2016 version) featured Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn turned in a $744 million gross even though that film got extremely unflattering reviews. Consider that there were many negative reviews against Barbie (another Margot Robbie film) from the same voices arraigned against Supergirl but Barbie still piled up a $1.4 billion worldwide gross in 2023.
Supergirl movie debuts
"Milly Alcock is great but ...unconvincing computerised mutt is one of the many problems..." – UK The Times
The pressure on Milly Alcock for Supergirl to fly – NY Times
...in her first lead film role, she’s carrying the weight of the retooled DC Universe’s second movie, the follow-up to the $618 million-grossing "Superman" from 2025 and a big bet from the DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran. "Supergirl" reportedly cost $175 million not including marketing and needs to make $315 million just to break even. And unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe heyday of the 2010s, superhero movies are far from a sure thing in 2026: One hasn’t crossed the billion-dollar mark since "Deadpool & Wolverine" in 2024...."
Supergirl "a hero in search of a better movie" – Boston
"Supergirl is a blast" – MSN Canadian Press
"DC’s disaffected heroine" – MSN Wall Street Journal
"...flat, pretentious and underwhelming" – First Post
"Milly Alcock's Kara Zor-El soars while Jason Momoa's Lobo steals the spotlight" – MSN India Times
Supergirl "not off to a flying start" – MSN Huffpost
This movie "promotes courage, perseverance and protecting the vulnerable, and emphasizes that trauma doesn’t define a person" – Washington Post
As reviews come in, Supergirl buzz is "fading fast" – Forbes
... things are starting to wobble. Gunn himself was so excited about the Supergirl script from Ana Nogueira that he then put the writer on the upcoming, all-important Wonder Woman. But a few days ahead of the Supergirl release, box office tracking is dropping, and the recently embargo-dropped social media impressions are mixed, at best...."
Supergirl "derivative if altogether watchable" – New York Times
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... faithful moviegoers have been caught up in a seemingly interminable cycle of indulgent excess and morning-after regret. That’s at least one way to describe what it’s been like to have watched the numbingly similar superhero stories that have flooded cinemas for decades..."
Predictions of a $55 million opening for Supergirl – MSN Deadline Hollywood
Related: "Milly Alcock’s ‘punk rock’ Supergirl takes flight as DC bets big on the Woman of Tomorrow" Washington Post
It's gotten pretty easy to bet against superhero movies, too many have failed in the last years. A tragic irony will be that Hollywood, seeing the money being made from the earlier superhero films, have moved forward to blow all the profits on those movies on sequels and reboots that don't make money but just cost money.
But Supergirl is only marginally a sequel (to 2025's Superman), and though there was an earlier Supergirl movie (1984), there's no resounding footprint of expectation for what's coming when Supergirl relases on June 26.
But... going by the trailers, this James Gunn superhero movie leans hard on "attitude" and this Supergirl (though directed by someone else) is still in the wheelhouse of that approach. If the film can deliver with a legit story to back up the swagger, that'd be a nice way for DC to break out of the string of losers they've been shipping to the screen.
The talk of "superhero fatigue" that crops up when super-movies are gliding to subpar earnings (or just crashing and burning) seems to correspond to superhero films that are thin on story and use the same tricks and plot elements of earlier films. The criticism that keeps getting heaped on James Gunn is "what, another Guardians of the Galaxy rip-off?"
In his defence, Gunn handles team dynamics in films well. He is able to marshall a lot of characters in a story and keep them distinct instead of blurring together. He should be ideal for superhero-team movies (which is what the 2025 Superman really was), but somehow that poor DCU film was overmade and a little stupid. Maybe Supergirl will be different.
At the door of the Hot Topic mall store "Truth, justice, whatever" June 9, 2026
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Original page June 29, 2026