The roof has fallen on James Gunn’s DCU, and we’re only two movies in. After last year’s “Superman,” which was suspiciously called a “hit” by the trades via Warner Bros., here comes Craig Gillespie’s “Supergirl,” turning into a potential flop.
Gillespie’s DCU movie earned just $6M in Thursday previews. Including previous advance showings, it has made $7.8M so far. Those aren’t encouraging numbers for a film whose tracking has fallen apart since tickets went on sale a few weeks ago.
What started as a projected $65M opening weekend in June is now looking more like a three-day tally in the $39M range. That would be a disastrous start for a film that Deadline now sats cost $186M to produce. Using the 2.5x rule, it would need to gross around $437M to break even, which does not appear likely, especially with early audience reactions being mediocre and the film currently sitting at a rotten 59% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Yet Warner Bros. is trying to fool us all again by going to its go-to trade, Deadline, which reports that the studio would deem “Supergirl” a “success” if it reached the $300M mark by the end of its run … what?! This would mean that, despite losing more than $100M, the studio would still try to spin the movie as a worthwhile greenlight. You can’t make this stuff up. Regardless, I doubt “Supergirl” will even reach that mark by the end of its theatrical run.
Warner Bros. is well known for its spin tactics. They did it last year with “Superman,” and, most suspiciously, with “One Battle After Another,” which they claimed needed only—you guessed it—$300M to break even, despite a budget of around $186M.
Regardless, with “Supergirl” in all likelihood becoming a bust, we now have a DCU that is being questioned by many and is in a state of uncertainty, as James Gunn tries to convince us that everything will be okay in the long run. Was greenlighting a pricey “Supergirl” movie really such a smart move? Many people, myself included, found the decision dubious from the get-go.
Gunn, who last year shelved Luca Guadagnino’s “Sgt. Rock” because Justin Kuritzkes’ script wasn’t up to his standards, has stated that “Supergirl” was greenlit as the second film in the new DC Universe slate because writer Ana Nogueira delivered an “incredible” script. He explained that, while he did not originally envision “Supergirl” as the immediate follow-up to “Superman,” they decided to fast-track it because the screenplay stood out above the other DC scripts. He emphasized that the decision was driven by his “quality comes first” philosophy. What does that say about the rest of the slate?
The good news is that the next DCU installment, this October’s R-rated “Clayface,” cost only $40M to produce and is exactly the kind of potential lifeline Gunn desperately needs at the moment.
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