'Supergirl' Fails to Top the Box Office in Opening Weekend

Supergirl is the second entry in the rebooted DC Universe, following on the heels of 2025’s Superman. Superman got the new DCU off to a good start, with positive reviews and a worldwide box office haul of $618 million, which should guarantee profitability even with a hefty budget of $225 million. Superman’s cousin Kara, aka Supergirl, was introduced in that movie, which hopefully should have set up her solo outing for success.

Now that Supergirl has been out for a whole weekend, we know it isn’t so. Supergirl took in $38 million domestically, well below the target of $50 to $55 million. The movie has made $68 million globally. It has a ways to go before it makes back its budget of $170 million, and further still if it wants to become profitable; according to a source at Variety, it will need to make at least $300 million for that to happen. Generally speaking, box office revenue declines each weekend, so Warner Bros. and DC Studios can probably kiss that dream goodbye. Most likely, Supergirl will join the ranks of other 2026 flops like The Bride! and Masters of the Universe.

Supergirl didn’t even top the box office this weekend, something you would expect a major new tentpole release to do; it came in second to Toy Story 5, which opened last weekend to franchise-high ticket sales. Toy Story 5 collected another $70 million at the domestic box office this weekend, and its worldwide total now sits at $585 million.

The question now is: why is the Toy Story franchise still flying high over three decades later while the new DCU seems in danger two years in?

For one thing, the reviews were very different. While critics lavished praise on Toy Story 5, they were divided on Supergirl, which follows the freewheeling Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) as she tries to help an alien girl named Ruthye (Eve Ridley) on her quest for justice and vengeance.

For another thing, superhero movies aren’t the reliable money-maker they once were. In the 2010s, even superhero movies starring lesser-known characters like Captain Marvel or the Guardians of the Galaxy could make upwards of a billion dollars at the box office. We’ve seen some superhero mega-hits in the 2020s, including Deadpool & Wolverine and Spider-Man: No Way Home. But there have also been underperformers like Thunderbolts*, Black Adam, The Flash, and Captain America: Brave New World, as well as outright bombs like The Marvels and Blue Beetle.

Initial crowds for Supergirl were 59% male, indicating that the movie didn’t attract many people outside of the core superhero fanbase. The superhero movies that do well these days tend to be the ones that star iconic, recognizable characters like Superman and Batman. That could be bad news for DC Studios, which is releasing the superhero horror movie Clayface this October, although with a budget of just $40 million, it should be easier for that film to recoup its costs. After that, the Superman sequel Superman: Man of Tomorrow will come out sometime in 2027.

Even if the glory days of the cinematic superhero are over, the movie theater industry is on the upswing overall. Revenues for this summer movie season are only 1.7% behind where they were in 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic effectively shuttered many theaters. The industry has struggled to recover ever since, but between hits like Project Hail Mary, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Michael, The Devil Wears Prada 2, Obsession, Backrooms, and Toy Story 5, it looks like 2026 is the year it finally happens. And other tentpole movies like Minions & Monsters, The Odyssey, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day are opening in the coming weeks.