Supergirl flops at the box office with $38 million opening on par with Joker 2

Opening weekend box office numbers are here, and things aren’t looking great for Supergirl. It only grossed $38 million, which is very close to Joker: Folie à Deux’s opening weekend take. Meanwhile, Toy Story 5 continues to reign supreme at the box office.

Deadline reported a $38 million domestic box office gross on Sunday morning, noting that Supergirl did worse than the MCU flop The Marvels. It didn’t do much better internationally either, with an estimated worldwide opening weekend gross of $68 million. Supergirl is nowhere near the highest-grossing opening weekend of the year, with even Michael and The Devil Wears Prada 2 having far better three-day openings. That’s not a great sign for James Gunn’s fledgling DCU.

It generally wasn’t a great week for new movies, as Jackass: Best and Last only made $8.4 million, albeit on a much lower budget than Supergirl. Toy Story 5 ultimately continued to dominate despite increased competition, dropping about 56% week over week. According to Deadline, these are the top ten highest-grossing films at the domestic box office this past three-day weekend:

1. Toy Story 5: $70 million
2. Supergirl: $38 million
3. Obsession: $9.8 million
4. Jackass: Best and Last: $8.4 million
5. Disclosure Day: $8.1 million
6. Backrooms: $4.3 million
7. Scary Movie: $3 million
8. Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War — The Calamity: $3 million
9. Masters of the Universe: $2.2 million
10. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu: $1.6 million

Supergirl’s underperformance once again proves that being a superhero movie does not guarantee you’ll be an instant hit in theaters anymore. Being a quality film is also important, and Supergirl just didn’t review very well. Even Polygon’s review was critical of it, stating that, “Where Gunn’s Superman set a high bar for weirdness and unexpected ways of reimagining familiar characters, Supergirl strolls under that bar without ever coming close to touching it.”

Supergirl should stay in theaters for a while, but its underperformance likely means we won’t need to wait too long before it arrives on HBO Max.