'Supergirl' is Officially DC's Biggest Box Office Disaster

Arturo Holmes. Getty Images.

I count myself among those who was in full support of James Gunn's attempt to resurrect the DC Extended Universe from the disastrously failed attempts to turn it into something that could compete with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After the success of the original Wonder Woman, the Zach Snyderverse quickly went off the rails. Partly because of Synder's own bad judgments, but also because of a personal tragedy that caused Warner Brothers to bring in Joss Whedon to finish Justice League by … Joss Whedoning the shit out of it. The tonal shift led to this horrible, disjointed Frankenstein of a movie. Then lesser projects blew up in their faces as well, and a whole new vision was needed to save future projects from further disaster. 

And this is what this new approach has produced:

ComicBookMovie -   It's only Supergirl's third weekend in theaters, but it seems like both exhibitors and Warner Bros. Discovery have, unfortunately, given up on the DC Studios movie.

In a not-quite-fatal blow to the DCU, the Woman of Tomorrow's latest solo outing lost over 1,000 theaters this weekend, leading to a 55% drop that will see it gross roughly $4 million during its third frame. That comes after a disappointing $1.1 million Friday. 

Supergirl has only made $66 million in North America since opening on June 26, and is now expected to end its run with $72 million to $74 million before an early Digital release on July 28. As a reminder, its combined production and marketing budget was reportedly $290 million.

Globally, Supergirl has made $110.9 million as of Friday, and should conclude its time in theaters with just $130 million worldwide. That's lower than The Marvels, which remains Marvel Studios' lowest-grossing MCU movie with only $206.1 million. Wonder Woman 1984 made $169.6 million in 2020, but received a day-and-date HBO Max release at a time when attendance in theaters was limited due to the pandemic. 

Supergirl likely won't beat Shazam! Fury of the Gods ($134 million), and runs the risk of falling short of Blue Beetle ($130 million). It's 2023 all over again for the DCU, and that's what James Gunn and Peter Safran set out to fix. …

"Bad writing, gratuitous cameos, and uninspired visuals take us back to the bad old days of the DCEU in Supergirl, a showcase for the super-talented Milly Alcock, but Kryptonite to anyone who likes good superhero movies," we wrote in one of our reviews.

By way of full disclosure, I haven't seen this movie. Or any of the others mentioned here other than WW84, which was an absolute trainwreck of a sequel after the original was one of my favorite movies in the entire genre. And by far the best the DCEU has produced. 

But by way of comparison, Catwoman swept the Razzie Awards the year it came out. It was so famously gawdawful that Halle Berry (who also won the Oscar for Monster's Ball that same year) decided to be a good sport about it and showed up in costume to accept her Worst Actress award. And as far as these other films, they all had modest budgets. Not much was expected of them. They fell into that slot between semi-theatrical release and streaming service filler. No one went into a Shazam! sequel hoping to build it out into some long sustaining IP like Harry Potter. It was a small swing and a small miss. Supergirl was expected to help build an empire. Now it has to have the studio boardrooms filled with people sifting through the wreckage wondering if anything at all can be salvaged from this. Or asking if it's time to pull the plug on yet another creative vision by yet another Hollywood industry fixer they handed their future over to. 

All of which begs the question of how it came to this. And why DC can't get their superheroes right, with the exception of Batman. These are timeless, instantly recognizable characters with a built-in audience. And yet every attempt WB makes to turn them into viable entertainment is worse than the one before. 

So as a fan of the content, let me offer a suggestion. It's not the fault of Milly Alcock. It's not because she got all snarky about Christian dads criticizing her casting and alienated a TV Superman:

…  saying some awful stuff and alienating a huge portion of your potential audience." 

"It's not going to work in the long run"

If you give the public what they want, they'll come see your movie regardless of how the actress in the title role answers inane questions during the publicity tour. 

And simply put, what people want out of their superhero movies is … wait for it … heroes. 

I'm not limiting this discussion to superhero movies, but all storytelling in general. From the time when stories were told around a campfire in a cave, to medieval tales of warriors and chivalric knights. to Tony Stark snapping half the universe back into existence, human brains are hardwired to hear tales of brave people doing heroic things. Not flawless people. Not gods. People overcoming their fears, doubts, insecurity, even their cowardice, and carrying out their duties in spite of it. From Beowulf to Frodo Baggins to Ellen Ripley. Hell, even the Ghostbusters qualify. But we've stopped telling those stories.

We're a good 15 or so years into this movement to deconstruct heroic characters. To retrofit them to fit a time when we don't believe in the inherent goodness of anyone anymore. At least the people who make films and TV series no longer seem to. Indiana Jones saved the world by preventing the Nazis from obtaining ancient Biblical superweapons. But now he's a lonely drunken absentee dad drunkenly passed out in a chair so his plucky, resourceful goddaugther can be the hero. Luke Skywalker not only brought down a galactic empire and brought balance to the universe, he saved his father, allowing him to redeem himself. We find him living a hermetic existence on an island drinking sea lion titty milk and being replaced by another plucky, resourceful Mary Sue. 

And how did Gunn choose to introduce Supergirl? With everybody's favorite super dog pissing on a newspaper account of her cousin's heroics:

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Yeah, we get it. Superman is a symbol of hope and optimism. But that ship sailed a while ago. There's no place for that kind of cornball archetype in an age of relentlessly disagreeable antisocial behavior. We need a super who's damaged to the point she wants to find a planet where she has no powers so she can drink herself blind and dance to teen rebellion music. 

Except we don't want that. We just keep getting presented with it, over, and over, and over again, ad nauseum. Despite the audiences avoiding crap like this repeatedly, this is the content we keep getting fed. We crave heroes the way we always did, but the people making entertainment refuse to catch on. We want main characters like Maximus, Katniss Everdeen, Harry Potter, Rocky Balboa, Capt. Jack Aubrey, Sarah Conner, James T. Kirk, Aragorn, Jim Lovell, John McClane. When we get a duo like Ryland Grace and Rocky, the theaters fill up. But for every Project Hail Mary we get two dozen petulant brats like Supergirl reminding us that everything suck and we should hate it. 

So figure it out, Hollywood. You can either go back to what audiences have been demanding since the dawn of civilization, our keep cranking out this negative, gloomy, depressing dreck. The choice is yours. So is the $200-plus million you're about to lose on this movie nobody asked for.