Warner Bros. Discovery has maintained for the last four years that DC was a decade-long project, and for most of that stretch the numbers went along with it. Superman cleared $618 million worldwide last summer, James Gunn had been installed as the studio’s answer to Kevin Feige, and the pitch pretty much wrote itself. This summer, however, made it a considerably harder sell.
Supergirl closed its theatrical run at roughly $125.9 million worldwide against a reported $170 million budget and something near $120 million in marketing, the weakest haul for a DC tentpole since Catwoman in 2004. MovieWeb’s review landed on 3 out of 5, praising Milly Alcock while calling the film around her entertaining and messy, and critics broadly split from audiences on the same point. That left Thursday’s second-quarter earnings call as the first real test of whether the company still wanted to discuss DC in public, and how confidently.
It did, though not in the terms it used before. Asked directly about the division’s future, chief executive David Zaslav steered his answer toward the release calendar rather than the strategy, telling analysts (via The Wrap) that “DC feels very good” and describing the slate as a robust pipeline. He talked up Gunn working 16- and 18-hour days on Man of Tomorrow, mentioned seeing images from the shoot the previous day, and said he had spoken to Matt Reeves about Batman over the weekend.
Zaslav did not address Supergirl by name, notably, and he skipped the bold 10-year plan framing he championed on earlier calls, including the victory lap he took when Superman opened.
Lanterns, the Green Lantern series starring Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre, reaches HBO later this month, and Clayface follows in October. Directed by James Watkins from a Mike Flanagan script, the body horror entry was never part of the original Gunn and Peter Safran plan, but was greenlit quickly and cheaply after Flanagan arrived with a finished take. Man of Tomorrow is in production for July 9, 2027, and Reeves’ The Batman Part II, which sits outside DCU continuity, has slipped to February 2028.
Safran offered a firmer version of this reassurance in June, saying Supergirl was one component of a broader long-term strategy the studio remained confident in. Zaslav’s answer was less substantial, which may reflect who is likely to be in the room by the time any of it pays off. Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery won shareholder approval in April and now faces an antitrust trial, brought by 12 states, set for March 2027.
Clayface arrives first, with a fraction of Supergirl’s budget and none of its expectations, which makes it the better read on whether the reboot has an audience problem or a Kara Zor-El problem.
- Release Date
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June 26, 2026
- Runtime
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108 minutes
