James Gunn’s ‘Superman’ Didn’t Exactly Save the World This Summer, And Looks More Like A Big Blue Blunder
The Man of Steel finally returned to the silver screen with a bright suit and a big smile last July, but when the receipts hit the table, the grin started to look a little forced.
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Honestly, I wanted this to be a true turnaround for the genre; a lot of folks did. We all wanted that classic hero to come in and save the day after years of messy cinematic world-building, but if you look at the cold, hard data coming out of Puck News (via Cosmic Book News), it’s a hard reality check.
Matthew Belloni over there isn’t pulling his punches, calling James Gunn’s Superman “decent but hardly remarkable,” which is industry speak for “it underdelivered.” Everyone was hyping this up as the reboot of the century, but when you look at the actual numbers on Box Office Mojo, a $616.8 million global finish just doesn’t scream “cultural phenomenon.”
The domestic audience did their part with a $354M haul, but once you look overseas, the wheels kind of fell off. It’s that same old story where the international crowds just weren’t buying what was being sold. Thus, Superman pulled in a soft $262M.
It’s almost like the “earnest” and “bright” tone they pushed so hard didn’t translate to the global fans who grew up on the more epic, mythic style of the previous era. Even on the home front, the Max streaming numbers are being spun as a win with 13 million views in ten days, but when you dig into the Samba TV data, it’s not exactly shattering records.
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It’s just… fine – and “fine” is a scary place to be when you’ve spent $225M on the movie and another $125M telling everyone to go see it.
This leaves a massive question mark over Supergirl. If the Man of Steel himself, with all that history and a massive summer launch, can’t even crack $650M, what does that mean for the B-tier characters? The math for a $200M Supergirl movie is an absolute tightrope walk.
If they can’t find a way to get those international audiences back into the theaters, these budgets are going to start looking like a massive liability for the studio. For those hoping for the best, you have to look at the facts: the “foundational” movie of this new universe just didn’t have the cape-flapping power we were promised.
But at least no squirrels were harmed in the making of this film, right?
