James Gunn’s reboot of the DC Cinematic Universe is off to an appropriately flying start. Superman has had a stellar opening weekend, hitting $122 million in the U.S. alone, making it the third-biggest box office launch of the year.
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International audiences have been slightly slower to show up, with Empire reporting that only another $95 million has come in from 78 nations, but it still gives Supes a fantastic total of $217 million in just a couple of days. It’s already safe to say that Gunn’s initiative is proving to be a success.
DCU movies have been in steep decline over recent years, as the muddle of tonally confusing films saw decreasing interest. Putting aside the various distinct Batman films not set in the shared universe, the last time a DC movie opened domestically to over $100m was Wonder Woman, nine years ago in 2017. Soon after, the Snyder-infused films dropped sharply, with Justice League falling to under $94m, and 2018’s Aquaman reaching just shy of $68m, before things got a lot worse.
In fact, the only two films in the franchise to open to over $50 million since are 2019’s Shazam! ($53.5m) and 2023’s The Flash ($55m)—the latter a deservedly considerable flop, its lifetime U.S. gross scraping to just $108.1 million. The final two movies in the contained franchise, Blue Beetle and Aquaman 2, both barely topped $25m in their opening weekend.
So, two years have gone by, the previous version of the DCU now (mostly) retconned, and Guardians of the Galaxy’s James Gunn has reinvented everything. With a ludicrously long list of superhero movies planned, including Supergirl, Clayface, The Authority, Swamp Thing and Sgt. Rock, among many others, Superman absolutely had to be a success, or the entire project would look extremely unlikely. So Big Blue’s initial success must be a huge relief to an awful lot of people.
This is certainly helped by the movie being quite good. While padded and oddly paced, Gunn managed to deliver a much more interesting opening take on the classic superhero, with a fun ensemble cast and an overt commentary on America’s current attitudes toward immigration. This was all helped by scattering Supes’ origin story throughout rather than making us sit through it all yet again, and sparing us yet another depiction of Lois’s figuring out who he is. Given this, word of mouth seems likely to boost the film’s continuing box office, rather than see it sharply drop off as people warn others to stay away, as with the truly awful The Flash.
The ticket sales also make this the most successful solo Superman movie opening of all time, too. It beat Man of Steel’s previous record of $116.7 million, although if you count Snyder’s po-faced 2016 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, that steaming turd of a film somehow brought in $166m in its first two days.
It’s a promising start to the Gunniverse, although names as obscure to non-comics readers as Clayface and Sgt. Rock are going to be a tough sell on reputation alone. Supergirl is going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting next year if people are going to show up for those.
It only remains to be seen how Warner CEO David Zaslav can step in to sabotage everything.
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