Box Office: ‘Supergirl’ Stumbles With $38 Million Debut, ‘Toy Story 5’ Remains No. 1 With $70 Million

“Supergirl” is struggling to take flight at the box office. The comic book adaptation, a space adventure revolving around Superman’s cousin, debuted to a disappointing $38 million from 3,600 North American theaters and $68 million globally.

via: Deadline

Toy Story 5 reigned supreme in its second weekend, not just in the U.S. with $70M, but around the world with a $159.1M WW take, rising the Disney/Pixar pic’s cume to $585M. Stateside, the Andrew Stanton movie is less than $3M from hitting the three-century mark.

Toy Story 5‘s second weekend hold of -56% is spot on with that of Incredibles 2‘s. Incredibles 2 holds the record for the best opening of an animated film, and Toy Story 5 is second, so that ease isn’t bad at all. Imax screens contributed $900K around the world for a $24M haul for the large format exhibitor.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros/DC Studios’ Supergirl became even more challenged over night with a $10.7M Saturday (-41% from Friday/previews), which is turning into a $38M domestic opening. Again, that isn’t the lowest 3-day start for a DC title, but it’s not good for a cosmo-hopping movie that cost $170M-$186M net before global spend. Supergirl‘s stateside start is lower than Disney/Marvel’s lowest, The Marvels ($46.1M) and it’s God awful close to DC disaster, Joker: Folie a Deux ($37.6M). Worldwide was horribly low with a $68M launch. More on that later.

The only nice thing to say about Supergirl is that she did very well in premium format screens with 51% of her gross coming from Imax ($7.4M) and PLFs. The Craig Gillespie movie was shot for Imax, and the exhibitor says that with a near 20% share of the weekend, it’s the highest opening weekend indexing of any superhero movie in Imax history. If that’s the case, all the more reason for more premium format screens so movies can make more money. Global Imax take for Supergirl was $10.9M, with $3.5M from overseas and $250K from China.

AMC Lincoln Square with $126K so far is the top grossing venue for Supergirl. This was followed by AMC Burbank, AMC Empire New York, AMC Universal Citywalk Los Angeles, AMC Century City Los Angeles, AMC Disney Springs Orlando, AMC Grove Los Angeles, AMC Metreon San Francisco, AMC Veterans Expressway Tampa, and Santikos Palladium San Antonio.

With the tepid opening of Paramount’s Jackass: Best and Last, the lowest start ever in the franchise at $8.4M (though it was cheap at $10M before P&A), it’s also possible that most people are saving their money to blow over July 4th when Illumination/Universal’s Minions & Monsters is expected to rule with potential $100M over five days, if not more. Some wonder if it was bad to put Supergirl on this date wedged between Toy Story 5 and Minions and Monsters. The answer is an absolute “No”: The marketplace needed a fanboy live-action film. Supergirl is getting bullied by competition, rather she’s being bullied by fanboys and critics as not being good enough. It’s hard to live in cousin Superman‘s shadow.

Even though the overall domestic weekend for all movies at $158M is -32% off last weekend when Toy Story 5 rallied the biggest frame of the year with $231.3M, note the annual and summer box office is still wonderfully intact. At $4.7B for the Jan. 1-June 28 period, the motion picture industry is +15% over 2025, and only -9% off the same frame in 2019 which had already hit $5.5B. This summer has officially crossed $2.1B, +17% over last summer at this point in time, and near even with 2019’s hot wave.

Sunday Numbers

1. Toy Story 5 (Dis) 4,425 theaters, Fri $21M (-71% from previous Friday), Sat $27M Sun $21.9M 3-day $70M (-56%), Total $297.2M/Wk 2

2. Supergirl (WB) 3,602 theaters, Fri $18M, Sat $10.7M Sun $9.1M 3-day $38M/Wk 1

3. Obsession (Foc) 2,965 (-88) theaters, Fri $3M (-36%) Sat $3.7M Sun $3M 3-day $9.8M (-27%) Total $233.9M/Wk 7

4. Jackass: Best and Last (Par) 2,855 theaters, Fri $3.8M Sat $2.6M Sun $2M 3-day $8.4M/Wk 1

5. Disclosure Day (Uni) 3,357 (-467) theaters, Fri $2.3M, Sat $3.3M Sun $2.3M 3-day $8.1M (-54%), Total $94.3M/Wk 3

6. Backrooms (A24) 2,396 (-455) theaters, Fri $1.3M (-47%) Sat $1.7M Sun $1.2M 3-day $4.3M (-44%),Total $184.1M/Wk 5

   
   

7. Scary Movie (Par) 2,855 theaters, Fri $925K Sat $1.2M Sun $875K 3-day $3M (-53%), Total $103.5M/Wk 4

   
   

8. Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Calamity (Fath) 943 theaters, Thu $1M Fri $680K, Sat $724K Sun $550K 3-day $3M/Wk 1

   
   

   This anime movie reps the long-awaited final arc of the Bleach franchise, adapting the conclusion of Tite Kubo’s manga. The original Bleach anime ran from 2004 to 2012 (366 episodes) but was canceled before finishing the story. This release picks up exactly where it left off. Pic screened in subtitled and English-dubbed versions and had behind-the-scenes footage and a conversation with Kubo alongside chief series director Tomohisa Taguchi and series director Hikaru Murata. Great business in LA and NYC.

   
   

9. Masters of the Universe (Amz) 2,090 (-427) theaters, Fri $613K (-58%) Sat $921K Sun $691K 3-day $2.2M (-64%), Total $61.9M/Wk 4

   
   

10. Mandalorian and Grogu (Dis) 1,250 (-750) theaters, Fri $450K (-61%) Sat $700K Sun $450K 3-day $1.6M (-61%) Total $175.2M/Wk 6

Notables:

The Invite (A24) 7 theaters Fri $156K Sat $123K Sun $99K 3-day $379K/PSA $54,1K Wk 1As we told you previously the Olivia Wilde directed sex comedy has the fourth best opening theater average YTD.

In a further deep-dive on PostTrak, men who showed up at 59% gave Supergirl a very low definite recommend at 45% while women at 41% were a bit better at 62%. Note, Supergirl was never expected to be Superman ($125M). Tracking was originally seeing $50M+, which was still way too low for this property.

Tracking firms saw this coming before summer even fired off: If there were any wobbly event films there were was going to be Amazon MGM Studios’ Masters of the Universe ($29.4M), Supergirl and Universal Amblin’s Disclosure Day. It was clear from most of these pics’ marketing campaigns that they didn’t have any stickiness, and would be challenged in expanding any demos beyond older men. Disclosure Day wound up beating its $30M range opening with a $44.5M U.S./Canada start, which was within the range of Spielberg sci-fi properties, and wound up pulling in the filmmaker’s older skewing faithful.

Where to begin? The biggest complaints from fanboys at a Burbank press screening last Monday was that they had zero patience for Gillespie’s homage: They didn’t want to see any nods to Guardians of the Galaxy or Mad Max and Furiosa. Been there, done that and don’t ever do that again. Krem the villain was too two dimensional and out of Hellraiser. Jason Momoa as Lobo was welcome, but not funny enough. Give ’em something fresh like Kane Parson’s Backrooms and Curry Barker’s Obsession.

But there’s a horrible reality and that’s that there is a toxicity among fanboys and critics with female-led superhero and action films. Captain Marvel got away with it with a $153.4M domestic opening because she was a bridge to Avengers: Endgame back in the pre-Covid heyday of superhero movies. But you can see in the comments there was a nastiness. Wonder Woman was able to repel such naysay as she’s a beloved superhero who never got her big screen debut. There was a huge want from female moviegoers to see a Wonder Woman movie like they wanted to see a Barbie movie. Also, audiences couldn’t deny Gal Gadot as being a dead ringer for Diana of Themyscira. Critics and fans have their gripes with the pint size House of the Dragon actress Milly Alcock as Kara (PostTrak audiences at 26% said she was the reason why they went to see the movie versus 49% who said they bought tickets because it’s part of a franchise they love).

There’s also the factor of too much Super too soon. Supergirl arrives exactly a year after Superman and next summer we have the sequel to the Man of Steel and Lex Luther movie, Man of Tomorrow, on July 9, 2027.

Supergirl took over all the Imax but split the showtimes on the PLFs with Toy Story 5. Imax reps 23% of ticket sales so far with PLFs at 26% for a 49% market share overall for large format screens. 3D reps 95 of the gross. Even play throughout the U.S. for the Gillespie movie but best in the West, South, South Central, and East. The AMC Lincoln Square in NYC is Supergirl‘s top grossing theater with $88K.

Diversity demos are 40% Caucasian, 30% Hispanic and Latino, 17% Black, and 8% Asian American. Men over 25 led at 41%, women over 25 at 26%, men under 25 at 18%, and women under at 15%. It’s said you need three demos to become a hit, and clearly that under 25 Gen Z/Gen Alpha bunch are not showing up here. Warners really wanted to connect with the under 25 female demographic and did a big push with Ulta Beauty stores and associated products.

Following the Craig Gillespie-helmed movie’s premiere, DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran admitted the title didn’t live up to the Warner Bros. banner’s “box office expectations” against its reported $175M budget.

“While Supergirl didn’t meet our box office expectations, it’s just one component of a broader, long-term strategy at DC Studios that we remain confident in,” Safran told The New York Times.

The DCU’s upcoming slate includes director James Watkins’ Clayface, premiering Oct. 23 in theaters, followed by DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn’s Man of Tomorrow, which is set for July 9, 2027. The Lanterns series is also expected to premiere on HBO in 2026.

With the World Cup and a blistering heatwave, Supergirl is currently looking at a $68M global opening weekend, taking $38M domestically.

Only slightly surpassing Joker: Folie a Deux‘s $37.6M domestic opening, Kara Zor-El’s debut solo outing in the new DCU is far behind Arther Fleck’s $114.8M global opening for the 2024 Todd Phillips-directed sequel.

Despite Supergirl‘s box office Kryptonite, the Superman (2025) followup saw the highest opening weekend for any superhero movie in Imax history, with 51% of the gross coming from Imax ($7.4M) and PLFs.