The figures from Friday night were poor. For a movie that cost between $290 and $300 million to develop and market, a $40 million domestic opening weekend is the kind of outcome that prompts urgent meetings and subtle changes to quarterly forecasts. One of the first pillars of DC Studios’ revitalized cinematic universe was Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. Rather, it turned out to be one of the studio’s biggest box office failures in years.
The fundamental math of contemporary superhero movies is harsher than it appears. The overall investment is somewhere over $290 million, including a $170 million production budget, a $120 million worldwide marketing expenditure, and a $100 million promotional partner effort that isn’t included in the official P&A figure. A movie at this investment level needs to make between $300 and $315 million in worldwide ticket sales just to break even because theaters receive around half of domestic ticket sales, and the split is significantly less favorable abroad. nor financial gain. Achieve break-even.
By the middle of its theatrical run, Supergirl had barely made $130 million in worldwide ticket sales. Warner Bros. is expected to lose between $100 and $125 million as a result of this discrepancy between the movie’s actual and required earnings. Regardless of how many other movies are doing well, it’s a figure that hurts.
It didn’t help that the reception was critical. The movie’s 56% Rotten Tomatoes rating put it in a challenging position: it wasn’t good enough to produce the type of enthusiastic word-of-mouth that transforms a respectable opening into a strong hold, but it wasn’t poor enough to provoke the kind of indignation that can occasionally drive curiosity-seekers to cinemas. Walk-up ticket purchasers who would have gone on a whim choose to wait for streaming, and films with mediocre reviews typically experience a dramatic decline in attendance in week two as the original opening-weekend crowd doesn’t promote it. Here, that trend was evident.
Another level of complexity was introduced by the time. Supergirl’s access to premium screens was restricted by Toy Story 5’s direct competition for the same multiplex crowds, which also divided the focus of casual and family moviegoers in ways that affected the more recent picture. With that degree of goodwill and brand equity, opening opposite a sequal is a scheduling choice that appears worse in hindsight than it most likely did on paper.
Citing the long game rather than specific launch weekends, Peter Safran, co-CEO of DC Studios, has openly expressed confidence in the larger DCU reboot strategy. The New York Times reports that executives intend to lessen their financial risk in the future by creating smaller-budget projects, such as a movie based on Clayface, that lower the break-even point and allow the studio to experiment without having to risk nine-figure losses every time. That’s a sensible answer. The method that led to this outcome is the alternative, which is to keep approving $170 million projects on characters without established audience attachments.