DC Studios suffered its first loss this weekend when Supergirl absolutely collapsed at the box office. Despite adjusted box office projections to account for a less-enthusiastic opening weekend, the film still disappointed with $38 million domestically - significantly under the $50 - $55 million predictions. Its international performance was worse than that, as it pulled in $30 million from other markets, bringing its opening weekend total to just $68 million.
There has been a lot of talk about what this means for the film, if it can even hope to earn back its $170 million budget much less break even, and whether the $100 million marketing deal was even effective at all. But there's a much bigger story here that core fans have begun discussing, and it's what Supergirl's box office failure means for the DC Universe franchise going forward.
Releasing Supergirl too soon has put the whole DC Universe at risk
The franchise, which just launched with Superman in the summer of 2025, has multiple movies and TV shows in development - most significantly, Man of Tomorrow next summer. Milly Alcock will return as the Girl of Steel in the Superman sequel, which is set to be led by David Corenswet's Man of Steel and Nicholas Hoult's Lex Luthor. But can the film make up for Supergirl's loss?
After the failure of the decade-long DC Extended Universe, James Gunn and Peter Safran's new DCU was designed to make up for that franchise's shortcomings - short-comings which involved fast-tracking a Justice League movie, questionable adaptations, lacklustre movies and standalone films that didn't offer much to the overall franchise. The DCEU did, however, have one thing going for it: The superhero explosion of the 2010s, when everyone had a comic book franchise. There was interest in lesser-known heroes because of what it all meant for the overall story.
Flash-forward 10 years and that goodwill is no longer there. There's an ongoing discussion about superhero fatigue and there is no denying that it is a thing, but the real conversation is surrounding franchise fatigue. Audiences will still go out to major tentpole movies like Superman or The Batman but they are overexposed to larger-than-life franchises, so there is less of a need to see every installment. Despite Joker's billion-dollar success, 2024 sequel Joker: Folie à Deux became one of the most expensive flops in DC movie history.
Taking all of that into account, the new DC Universe had a mountain of disinterest to overcome and it played it understandably safe with Superman, which proved to be a global success. And yet, even its incredible $618 million would have been so much bigger had it been released between 2016 and 2019. Still though, the film reportedly generated $125 million in profit.
This is one of the biggest issues with Supergirl coming next, as the film's failure could very well result in a loss of around of around $80 million - and that's only riding on the possibility that it manages to gross $200 million at the box office (which, right now, isn't guaranteed). And, therefore, the money that the DC Universe has made via its films (i.e. Superman) has essentially just evaporated with Supergirl's loss.
The truth is that it was too soon for Supergirl - at least on a theatrical stage. Not only is the DC Universe franchise just getting out of the gate, we have had multiple adaptations of the Girl of Steel in recent years: Melissa Benoist's widely-successful Supergirl series concluded after six seasons in 2021 and Sahsa Calle played an alternate version of Kara Zor-El in 2023's box office bomb The Flash. If the DCU's purpose is to appeal to mainstream audiences, trying to explain why we've had three Supergirls in the past decade isn't going to help - nor is the overexposure to the character in that decade.
While the Girl of Steel is arguably a more interesting character than her more famous cousin, she has never been the box office titan that he was. The stars would have aligned for her on the big screen if her movie had come out in the 2010s (just as they did on the small screen during that very same decade) but we're living in a vastly different world now. So, running out a film about that particular hero when alternate versions of her were still fresh in people's minds, your franchise is just getting its legs in a very uncertain world for blockbusters in terms of profitability, and you haven't even established that universe outside of the Supers was just a bad idea all around.
It also weakens the appeal of said Super Family. Man of Tomorrow was fast-tracked off the back of the DC Universe's triumph and it should, in theory, drive a lot of ticket sales. But the third movie focused on the Fam of Steel in three years when the franchise hasn't really built its own identity outside of them was always going to be a risk. Supergirl's history-making box office loss has now cast a shadow over that. It's not a standalone movie that the franchise can move on from, and considering that there are more projects built on lesser-known heroes waiting in the DCU wings, it might be time to go back to the drawing board.
Supergirl is in theaters now.
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