In July 2025, James Gunn’s DC Universe had its inaugural theatrical release with Superman. The film launched into its opening weekend with $220 million worldwide and ended its box office run with an impressive $619 million. A few weeks later, The Fantastic Four took their first steps in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and almost matched Superman’s opening weekend, falling only a few million shy of $220 million.
The competition between Marvel and DC ultimately came down to who had more stamina. Superman outlasted The Fantastic Four and collected almost $100 million more than Marvel’s first family. First Steps’ final haul landed at the $522 million mark. The DC Universe was off to a good start for their summer blockbuster rivalry against the MCU.
It was a close call going into the contest; both Superman and Fantastic Four were on their third cinematic iteration this century, with the latest promising to be the definitive version of the respective heroes for the foreseeable future. They were both the start of something big for their franchises: Superman being the first film in James Gunn’s DCU and Fantastic Four helping to usher in new principal heroes for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Can the results of last summer prophesize the upcoming box office battle? Supergirl will be landing in cinemas on June 26. About a month later, Spider-Man: Brand New Day will swing by a theater near you – July 31. While Supergirl is the first of a sub-franchise (a spin-off from Superman), this will be Spidey’s fourth solo adventure in the MCU.
With Supergirl quickly approaching, box office tracking is being reported, yet it is not so promising. These opening weekend predictions are calculated by gauging ticket pre-orders and online interest in the movie. Tracking suggests Supergirl will have a $47–65 million domestic debut. This is far below Superman’s $125 million U.S. opening.
Since Spider-Man: Brand New Day comes out five weeks after Supergirl, it is too early to project its opening weekend, but since this is a direct sequel, we can analyze the precedent set by the third Spider-Man film. Unfortunately for DC, Spider-Man: No Way Home pulled in a massive $600 million worldwide in its first weekend ($260 million of that was domestic). No Way Home ended its historic run with $1.9 billion, climbing its way onto the top ten all-time box office list.
However, sales figures have been more and more unpredictable, so it could be ill-advised to strictly go by its predecessor that came out five years ago. Recently, the third Avatar epic (Fire and Ash) made 36% less than the second one (The Way of Water), three years prior. And to use an MCU example, last year’s Captain America: Brave New World dropped a painful 64% compared with the previous movie in that series (Civil War). But even if the fourth Spidey dips a similar percentage, it would still finish higher than Superman did last summer.
Based on these statistics, it is significantly probable that the MCU will come out on top this summer. Every box office battle has its own distinctive factors to consider, and when it comes to Supergirl vs. Spider-Man, the most important factors are Spider-Man's superior name recognition along with the established success of the ongoing MCU Spider-Man saga.
It may be a while before these two opponents have another summer box office duel. At one point, it was looking like Black Panther 3, Shang-Chi 2, or an X-Men reboot could face off against Man of Tomorrow next year. Now, time is running out for the MCU to schedule a summer movie for 2027. So, unless Marvel Studios has secretly started filming one of those aforementioned projects, 2027 will be the MCU’s first year without a summer movie release since the pandemic shut down theaters in 2020.
Add us as a preferred source on Google