Box office bust for 'Supergirl' sees DCU fate addressed

Things are looking pretty wobbly for DC at Warner Bros. Discovery these days, with those grand, ten-year masterplan pronouncements starting to sound a bit hollow. For a while, the numbers made sense—last summer’s Superman brought in $618 million globally, James Gunn was hailed as their long-awaited Kevin Feige, and everyone could feel self-satisfied about being on the right track. But a year on, with Supergirl now in the rear-view, convincing anyone of DC’s long-term prospects is getting a fair bit harder.

Supergirl wrapped up with just $125.9 million worldwide—a franchise low not seen since Catwoman flopped back in 2004.

Supergirl's Stumble and the Fallout

What happened? Supergirl closed its theatrical run at just under $126 million worldwide. That's set against a reported $170 million production budget and, if you believe the rumours, something close to $120 million chucked at marketing. That’s not just underwhelming—that’s “wake up and smell the Kryptonite” territory for a DC tentpole. By comparison, even the much-maligned Catwoman nearly two decades ago did about as poorly.

Critics and audiences couldn’t seem to agree on what went wrong, either. MovieWeb handed it a middling “3 out of 5”—praising Milly Alcock in the lead but calling the rest of the film a muddle, entertaining as it might be. Fans and reviewers generally split down roughly the same line, all agreeing Alcock was a highlight in a bit of a mess.

With Supergirl tanking, the studio faced its first genuinely awkward quarterly earnings call. Would they even mention DC at this point, let alone trumpet those old hopeful slogans? In the end, David Zaslav (the CEO) dived for safer ground, glossing over the strategy and instead pointing to a “robust pipeline” of new films, and that classic trick of shifting focus to what’s coming next.

Here’s how Zaslav put things when pressed about the future of DC during the latest round of analyst grilling (via The Wrap):

“DC feels very good.”

Big on optimism, light on specifics. Instead of the bold 10-year plan talk we heard after Superman’s release, Zaslav focused on Gunn’s epic hours working on Man of Tomorrow, shared that he'd seen new set photos, and mentioned chatting with Matt Reeves about Batman. Not a single word on Supergirl. The phrase “10-year plan” has quietly vanished. You don’t need to be a body language expert to read the signals.

What’s Actually Coming Up?

• Lanterns — Green Lantern series, led by Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre, lands on HBO this month.
• Clayface — James Watkins directing from a Mike Flanagan script, out in October. This body horror flick was never part of the original Gunn-and-Safran roadmap but got the nod with unusual speed when Flanagan handed in a completed vision. Also, much cheaper than Supergirl—which everyone in Burbank is probably relieved about right now.
• Man of Tomorrow — Currently filming, set for release on 9 July 2027. Gunn is burning through 16- and 18-hour days, apparently.
• The Batman Part II — The Matt Reeves sequel, which sits well outside DCU mainline continuity, delayed to February 2028.

Back in June, DC boss Peter Safran struck a more confident note, calling Supergirl just one piece of a bigger strategic jigsaw the studio is supposedly sticking with. Zaslav, by contrast, has got noticeably more vague, maybe because no one truly knows who’ll be running DC, or indeed the company itself, whenever the magical long term is supposed to pay off. Need some corporate drama? Paramount Skydance has a $111 billion bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery already past its shareholder vote, but there’s an antitrust trial looming for March 2027 before that can go through.

Clayface: The Real DC Litmus Test?

That brings us to Clayface, which will go out first, is made for a fraction of Supergirl’s price tag, and comes with exactly none of Supergirl’s weighty expectations. If it flops as well, perhaps it really is time for another rethink—or maybe this is more of a Kara Zor-El issue after all.

And in case you wondered, Supergirl actually had a plot: Kara Zor-El, still wrestling her Krypton survivor’s guilt, drifting through space with her dog Krypto, gets pulled into a bloody vendetta when a young warrior named Ruthye begs her help to avenge her family against a certain Krem of the Yellow Hills. Yes, even space epics have a classic revenge quest at heart.