'Superman' Box Office: 7 Hot Takes From a $125 Million Debut
Yes, ‘Man of Steel’ opened better. No, one Superman success does not guarantee a future for DC Studios. Plus more good, bad or ugly “takeaways” from a solid start.
As frankly expected, Warner Bros. Discovery is now reporting that Superman opened with $125 million in its domestic Fri-Sun debut weekend, not $122 million. This is a game every studio plays. If a Disney or a Universal can get a positive reception for a lower weekend estimate, they’ll offer up that lowball figure and then bask in the glow of “It did even better than we thought!” coverage on Monday. My only crankiness over this is that I had to redo all of my math at the last minute on Sunday morning, when I could have just left it alone had $125 million been the offered-up weekend estimate yesterday.
No matter, new gross = new math. If Superman legs out like The Batman ($370 million from a $134 million debut in March 2022) or Spider-Man: Homecoming ($334 million/$117 million in July 2011), it’s looking at a $345-$355 million domestic finish. However, if it legs out closer to Man of Steel ($291 million/$128 million in June 2013) or Thor: Love and Thunder ($343 million/$144 million in July 2022), then it ends with a $285-$295 million total. The overseas numbers, $96 million, still stink, and it’s offhand looking like a global total between $500 million and $665 million. Will that be good enough? Well…
No, Superman did not set an opening weekend record for a Superman movie.
No, I’m not talking about inflation. However, yeah, Man of Steel’s adjusted-for-2025 Fri-Sun debut would be around $177 million, while (for what it’s worth) Superman Returns’ then-disappointing $85 million Wed-Sun launch in 2006 would be around $145 million today. No, I’m just speaking to raw grosses when the media declared that Superman had set a new milestone for a Superman movie in terms of its domestic Fri-Sun debut. That’s because Warner Bros. and, frankly, most media sites have listed Man of Steel’s opening not as $128 million but as $116.6 million. That does not include $12 million in Thursday paid previews that Walmart sponsored.
In almost every other such circumstance, the Friday total includes paid previews. It’s a point of contention, especially as A) “advance night” showings have become more commonly frequented by more casual moviegoers and B) “advance night” has evolved from “first show at 12:01 a.m.” to “first show is Thursday at 2:00 p.m.” Regardless, consistency means that they all count toward the whole opening day gross, which is why I sometimes break down how much it earned in previews versus the “raw Friday.” So why not here? Well, I theorized even in June 2013 that WB knew that Man of Steel wasn’t going to hold well.
So, selling the opening weekend as $116 million made its $41 million opening weekend (against an $82 million launch for Monsters University and a $66 million debut for World War Z) look like a mere 65% drop and not a 68% plunge. In the broad scheme of things, this scandalous switcheroo was and remains harmless and irrelevant. Man of Steel continued to decline, and the narrative was such that WB panicked and threw Mr. Caped Crusader into the sequel. Boasting about the biggest opening for a Superman movie will provide only temporary solace if it legs out closer to Ant-Man and the Wasp than Black Widow.