X is full of billion-dollar predictions for James Gunn’s Man of Tomorrow right now.
A post asking whether the Superman sequel touches $1 billion has pulled over 225K views and more than a thousand replies, and some fans are going further, claiming it will beat Avengers: Doomsday.
Worth remembering the track record here: the same corners of X spent the spring insisting Supergirl would take down Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Well, we know how that worked out. Supergirl finished with $126.4 million worldwide using the James Gunn cut, with a reported loss of nearly $250 million. Brand New Day is at $2.23 billion and counting.
Can Man of Tomorrow get to a billion? Possibly.
But the road doesn’t run through fan polls, and it doesn’t run through North America.
What it does run through is the international audience Zack Snyder built for DC — the same audience my insiders have been pointing at for months, and the same audience James Gunn keeps losing.
The Math Fans Are Skipping
Gunn’s Superman finished with $618.7 million worldwide: $354.2 million domestic (57.3%) and $264.5 million international (42.7%).
Supergirl finished with $126.4 million worldwide: $72.4 million domestic and $54 million international, and guess what? It has the exact same 42.7% international share.
Two DCU movies from Gunn, and the foreign contribution is locked at 42.7% both times.
Hold that split and run the billion-dollar math.
At 42.7% international, Man of Tomorrow would need roughly $573 million domestic, a number only the biggest box office runs in history have ever touched.
That is not happening off a $618 million first film.
Even if we give Man of Tomorrow a bump to $400 million domestic — more than Superman, and more than any movie Snyder made for DC — it still needs $600 million from overseas to reach a billion.
That’s more than double what Gunn’s Superman did internationally, and more than the $544 million Batman v Superman pulled in overseas, not adjusted for inflation. That figure remains the international benchmark for a Superman movie, set a decade ago when ticket prices were lower.
And note who actually gets DC to a billion.
The only two DC movies to cross the mark in the last decade — Aquaman, starring Snyder’s Justice League Aquaman, and Joker — each earned roughly 70% of their money from international markets.
Nobody gets DC to a billion domestically. There’s a reason they call Gunn’s Superman, Domestic-Man.
Zack Snyder’s DC Was Built Overseas
Now look at the audience Snyder has.
- Man of Steel (2013): $379.1 million international — 56.6% of its $670.1 million worldwide total.
- Batman v Superman (2016): $544 million international — 62.2% of $874.4 million.
- Justice League (2017): $432.3 million international — 65.4% of $661.3 million.
And yes, the theatrical Justice League was the Joss Whedon cut. But it still had Snyder’s cast and Snyder’s characters, and the international audience still showed up at 65%, as the Whedon version pulled $168 million more overseas than Gunn’s Superman did nine years later.
Adjust for inflation, and the picture gets worse for the fans running victory laps.
In 2026 dollars, Man of Steel lands around $960 million, Justice League around $900 million, and Batman v Superman clears $1.2 billion.
Snyder was already making billion-dollar-scale DC movies. The tickets were just cheaper. That also means a lot more fans showed up.
That’s the audience James Gunn and Man of Tomorrow need to win back.
The Insiders Called This One By Name
Back on November 28, my insiders laid out exactly what the global market wants: “bigger than life rock star personalities like Michael Jackson and Elvis,” not a Superman who “whines, gets pushed around, and is too busy dealing with feelings” mid-crisis.
Gunn’s explanation for Superman‘s overseas stall was the opposite. He told Rolling Stone the character is “not a known commodity in some places” and reached for anti-American sentiment abroad.
Then Michael came out.
The Michael Jackson biopic passed Gunn’s Superman‘s entire worldwide run in 22 days, then kept climbing on a 61% overseas share, and has now finished over $1.021 billion worldwide, per Box Office Mojo, with 63.6% of it international.
The literal name my insiders used went out and did the billion-dollar number Gunn’s Superman couldn’t, off the back of the exact markets Gunn wrote off.
One more for scale: Michael‘s $649.550 million international haul is more than double what the entire DCU has earned overseas across two movies combined ($318.5 million).
The global audience isn’t gone. Michael proved it. Brand New Day is proving it at 61% international right now.
That audience just isn’t showing up for Gunn’s DC.
Gunn Burned The Exact Audience He Needs
Finding $300-plus million in new international money means winning growth markets. India is at the top of that list, and that’s where this gets ugly.
Days before Superman opened, Gunn’s “12-year-old in India” comment sparked backlash and boycott calls across Indian social media, with fans calling the remark dismissive.
Then India censored Superman itself, cutting the flying kiss as “overly sensual” and trimming Guy Gardner’s middle-finger constructs.
Meanwhile, Zack Snyder’s Justice League shot to #1 in India the moment HBO Max launched there through JioHotstar.
A four-hour cut, years after release, topping the chart in the market Gunn shrugged off.
That’s what an international audience looks like when it actually wants your version of these characters.
What A Billion Actually Takes
Man of Tomorrow brings back Milly Alcock’s Supergirl — from the movie that just made $54 million overseas, total — and adds more heroes on top.
A bigger ensemble can help domestic. It does nothing about a 42.7% international.
The bar is the Snyder band: 56-65% international. Hit 60% and the billion suddenly works: $400 million domestic, $600 million overseas, roughly Michael‘s international run.
Stay at 42.7%, and the fans on X are doing Supergirl-beats-Spider-Man math all over again.
Sure. A billion dollars is on the table for Man of Tomorrow.
It’s just sitting overseas — right where Zack Snyder left it.
