The verdict is in, and it’s the exact call I’ve made for weeks.
Supergirl is opening at the low end of its range — around $40 million — and losing the No. 1 spot in its own debut frame to the second weekend of Toy Story 5.
Per Deadline, Supergirl is tracking toward a $40 million opening at 3,602 theaters, with Friday coming in around $18 million (including the $7.8 million in previews).
It’s a soft start for a DC tentpole, and it lands right where the bearish numbers had been heading all along.
Exactly What We Called
Two things we reported ahead of the trades just came true at once.
First, Supergirl is losing its own opening weekend to Toy Story 5. We flagged that possibility over a week ago, when no one else was saying it, and Deadline later confirmed it outright. Now it’s the result.
Second, the number landed at the floor.
While Deadline opened tracking at $55 million-plus, the independent trackers had cut their estimates toward a $34-40 million range, and that’s exactly where it’s coming in.
The trades spent the last couple of weeks quietly walking their own numbers down from $55M+ to the upper $40s; the actual result is even softer.
The Toy Story 5 Gap Isn’t Close
The matchup is as lopsided as the tracking suggested.
Toy Story 5‘s second frame looks like roughly $74 million, a -54% hold that puts the Pixar sequel over $300 million domestic in just 10 days.
The second weekend ($74 million) is still nearly double Supergirl‘s entire opening ($40 million). A two-week-old animated holdover is set to out-gross a brand-new superhero tentpole on its launch weekend, and it isn’t a photo finish.
Opening Below Flops
Supergirl‘s $40 million opening lands below both The Marvels ($46.1 million opening, $206 million worldwide finish) and The Flash ($55 million opening, $271 million finish), a Marvel film and a DC film, both of which were written off as flops.
It’s also right at Morbius‘ $39M and lower with inflation factored in than Birds of Prey ($42M).
Opening under movies that already disappointed isn’t a mixed result; it’s a worse one.
The reviews don’t offer a lifeline either. Supergirl sits at 57% with critics and a 77% audience score, and 77% is a poor number for a superhero movie, a genre where audience scores routinely live in the high 80s and 90s. Gunn’s Superman drew a 90% just last year.
The International Number Is The One To Watch
The bigger question mark is overseas. As of Deadline‘s Friday update, Supergirl‘s foreign haul stood at just $5.2 million from its first markets, with no update since, against a hopeful $80 million-plus global launch target across 77 territories. China and Japan opened Friday; France and Belgium don’t bow until next weekend.
That’s the part that matters most for the bottom line. A soft domestic opening is survivable if overseas carries the load, but Gunn’s Superman already underperformed internationally, and the early Supergirl foreign numbers look soft too.
If the overseas doesn’t show up, this is where a disappointing-but-not-catastrophic opening turns into real money lost.
The Bar Was Already Lowered
A $40 million opening also lands against a backdrop where Warner Bros. had already quietly lowered the bar for what it would call a win, with insiders floating a $300 million worldwide figure as a “victory,” a number that looks even harder to spin now that the domestic start has come in at the floor and the budget may be as high as $186 million.
The full opening-weekend totals land Sunday, and the international picture will fill in over the next several days.
But the headline is already written, and it’s the one we’ve been reporting for a month: Supergirl is flying low, and Toy Story 5 owns the weekend.
