Supergirl Falters at the Box Office, Testing DC Studios Reboot

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … ker-thud.In a setback for Warner Bros.and its DC Studios division, “Supergirl” arrived to weak ticket sales over the weekend.

The movie, which cost $170 million to make and tens of millions more to market, was on pace to take in about $38 million from Thursday through Sunday at theaters in the United States and Canada — about 24 percent below prerelease analyst projections of $50 million that had already been considered disappointing.It took in an additional $30 million overseas.The film received a “rotten” rating from the review-aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.

Ticket buyers were similarly unimpressed, giving “Supergirl” a B-minus grade in CinemaScore exit polls.Audiences have become much more selective about superhero movies since the genre’s heyday in the 2010s.In 2022, “Black Adam,” starring Dwayne Johnson, arrived to a disappointing $67 million in opening-weekend ticket sales, while “Morbius,” with Jared Leto in the main role, had a disastrous $39 million debut.Still, box office analysts on Sunday noted an uncomfortable truth: Female-led superhero movies have been rejected almost uniformly over the past five years or so, perhaps reflecting a resurgent misogyny among the core fan base, which is largely male.

Before its release, “Supergirl” became caught up in a now-familiar cycle of online abuse, with some fanboys attacking Milly Alcock’s casting and appearance.Warner Bros.

executives said they were surprised by both the ferocity of the backlash and its reach, believing the culture had evolved past that sort of campaign.“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,” Peter Safran, co-chairman and co-chief executive of DC Studios, said by telephone.Hollywood has been having its best summer at the box office since the Covid-19 pandemic threatened to permanently alte...