What happens to James Gunn’s DC Universe if Supergirl is a box office bomb?
It was (seemingly) all good just a year ago. Superman hit theaters on July 7, 2025, grossing $618.7 million on a $225 million budget. The genuinely positive response the reboot received was the shot in the arm that James Gunn’s DC Universe initiative needed. Sure, Gunn directed the film, the latest reintroduction to Clark Kent (bka Superman) in the latest relaunch of the DC Comics movie universe (which dropped the “Extended” from its previous name), but this was more about establishing a DC Universe that fans would be receptive to and hopefully want to return.
Towards the very end of the film, you hear a crash through the wall of Clark’s place, where Milly Alcock‘s Kara Zor-El (aka Supergirl) bursts through — to the wonderment of Krypto, who we find out was her dog all along. Kara had been out in the universe (no pun intended), looking for planets with a red sun so she could get plastered in what appears to be an annual birthday tradition.
Fans were in love with her foul mouth and IDGAF attitude; it probably helped that she was plastered. It didn’t take long for Gunn to drop teasers for the film that July; as time progressed, it was revealed that the film was based on the 2021 DC miniseries Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (the coat she wore in Superman even resembles what she wore in the series). Woman of Tomorrow was told from the perspective of a young girl named Ruthye, who was looking to avenge her father’s death; he was stabbed by a man named Krem of the Yellow Hills, a member of the murderous group known as the Brigands. After deciding to help Ruthye with her situation, Kara — and Krypto — are injured, with Kara having a new reason to wreak havoc on Krem and his savage men. Word on road was that the story for this miniseries was originally supposed to more resemble True Grit, with Supergirl and Lobo embodying the Mattie Ross and Rooster Cogburn roles, respectively. Hell, the film was even titled Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow at one point, but while they dropped the excess from the title, Gunn did bring Lobo, “the biggest comic book character that’s never been in a film,” into Supergirl in that very Rooster Cogburn role. And with the source material allowing Alcock to go full-on hungover antihero mode, this felt like another Gunn-style recipe for off-kilter success.
Somehow, some way, something went awry with Supergirl.
It’s hard to blame Alcock, likely best known for her work as Young Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen in HBO’s House of the Dragon, for what Supergirl became. It’s a modern superhero origin film, where we’re given the most important bits about their past while seeing their present; at times it felt like 2019’s Captain Marvel, another superhero film featuring a badass woman looking to reconcile her past while adjusting to a new life as a proper superhero. (With a playlist that is likely titled ANTHEM ROCK blaring on the stereo.) Actually, it blends flavors of a few films in building out the DC Universe; there’s very much of a Guardians of the Galaxy feel to this film, at least in terms of the planet-hopping and the fleshing out of the larger galaxy that Gunn’s universe inhabits. And in telling Kara’s backstory, we get the fuller picture of what happens on Krypton, the planet Clark was escaping as a baby in a pod when he crash-landed on Earth. Kara spent a chunk of her life on Argo, and Supergirl shows how that impacted the woman she’s becoming, which obviously informs the hero she stands tall as at the end of the film.
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It’s the rest of the film that’s the issue. The character beats and story are recycled and predictable; if you’ve been watching superhero movies since Marvel Studios finally figured things out, Supergirl is a tale you’ve sat through time and again. Hero doesn’t want a sidekick because they are too grumpy dealing with their own life; hero learns to love the sidekick and is immediately removed from said sidekick; hero takes what the sidekick has taught them and uses it to save the sidekick. Is it unfair to single out Supergirl for this kind of lazy storytelling? Possibly, but when the film isn’t giving you much else to chew on with its sub-two-hour runtime, you start to count the ceiling tiles.
Like, for as menacing as Krem is in the comics, he comes off as a Mad Max-esque henchman leading a band of psychotic goofs. He’s violent and the actual worst, with a string of on-screen murders attributed to him. But aside from checks notespicking up and eating whatever food is around the person he is trying to intimidate in a room, there’s not much else gained from his presence. A hungry murderer?
Ultimately, there isn’t much that works in this film. Momoa’s Lobo is on full display, and while it feels like he’s there to light sticks of dynamite and watch the film explode, these moments double as obvious feelers for a future Lobo film. That’s not even an issue, but to borrow a Chris Rock phrase, lie to me, DC! Invest some more time in building the relationship — however screwy — between Kara, Ruthye, and Lobo, instead of having him appear in scenes as the untouchable disrupter, an immortal bounty hunter who rides a kickass motorcycle and has red eyes. You don’t want to trifle with Lobo, you see, which effectively gives him carte blanche to turn impossible situations into convenient escapes.
“Another day, another bad superhero film,” one may say, but the second movie in this first chapter — Chapter One: Gods and Monsters — of the new DC Universe may portend trouble. Gunn got a good one last year with Superman, a franchise that will anchor everything else to come this year. Included in Chapter One are: Lanterns, the HBO series which premieres in August, and the body-horror film Clayface, which hits theaters in October. Man of Tomorrow, the Supermansequel featuring Superman and Lex Luthor teaming up to take out Brainiac, hits theaters in July 2027. If 2026 taught Hollywood anything, it’s that you have to follow what the kids are buzzing about. Films like Obsession and Backroomshave made hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, with strong word-of-mouth and discussions following each film building the mystique around each project. It’s not quiet for Supergirl, but the buzz surrounding this film hasn’t felt nearly as massive as Sony’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day or Avengers: Doomsday, two superhero films also dropping this year. They’re too far gone to abandon ship, but it also doesn’t feel like they had much of a plan for this sophomore DC Universe film release.
Look, all I’m saying is that the last thing the DC Universe needs right now is a brick at the box office. For a company that has spent the better part of the last decade finding new heads to revamp its start-stop direction at the cinema every couple of years, Supergirl failing to deliver would ironically be the song remaining the same at DC.
The last thing anyone wants to see is another regime change over at DC, but as in life, the only constant at DC is change.
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