DC Studios’ and Warner Bros. Pictures’ first DCU live-action installment Superman is inevitably flying toward $600 million at the worldwide box office after another strong hold on the weekend top-10 charts. This weekend sees Superman at about $595 million (plus or minus) worldwide, and hitting the magic $600 million mark sometime in the next several days.
David Corenswet stars in “Superman.”
Source: Warner
Superman By The Numbers
Superman, from writer-director and DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn, is only falling by about 35% week to week at this point, despite having lost roughly one-third of its screens. That’s good enough for a sixth-place finish this weekend. If the trend continues, then next weekend could see Superman just a couple of hundred thousand dollars behind Marvel Studio’s underperforming (but excellent and must-see on a big screen) Fantastic Four: First Steps.
Which begs the question, if other titles are performing weaker, why don’t theaters expand Superman’s screen count to take advantage of the final weeks of release providing such small declines simultaneous with theaters’ larger margins (theaters get a much bigger portion of ticket sales later in a film’s release)?
The relevance of this is two-fold. First of all and for theaters mostly, the higher profit margin on sales for multiplexes and stronger per-screen average suggests there’s money being left on the table, to the tune of a few million more bucks probably.
Second and far more relevant to our discussions here, increasing the theater count and securing those final additional millions of dollars would help boost Superman’s box office cume further past $600 million, and although it’s already more than successful enough to be a blockbuster and prove audiences are ready to show up for the Man of Steel and DC superheroes again, seeing the number going up, up and away even while the film is selling on home entertainment serves as extra marketing in both directions as well as pure buzz factor.
The greater the public impression of celebration around Superman’s successful launch and widespread enthusiastic reception, the more momentum it builds towards the next DCU project. Which in this case is the imminent arrival of Peacemaker season 2, with a story that apparently picks up soon after the events of Superman.
This is, by the way, the reason for Superman releasing on home entertainment just a little more than a month after its theatrical debut, so that anyone who hasn’t seen the film yet (or who needs to see it again as a refresher) can do so before watching Peacemaker’s new season.
Anyway, if I were a theater chain I’d want Superman on as many screens as possible right now, with signs in the lobby saying “See it on the biggest screen you can, while you still can!” and standees of Krypto for kids to take pictures with. Have a “bring your pets” day for families, hire someone to dress up as Superman to greet the audience before each screening, get the Humane Society to bring dogs for adoption at the theater and put capes on all of those furry little heroes.
Summer is coming to a close, Labor Day is approaching, and Superman is one of the biggest and best family films in theaters. With audiences taking it mostly easy in anticipation for the rest of the year’s upcoming final blockbuster offerings, this feels like a chance to light a little fire under the last of the gas and get folks back into theaters one last time. Maybe offer double-feature discount tickets for both Superman and Fantastic Four: First Steps on premium IMAX and Dolby Cinema screens. I just feel like there’s some missed opportunities and money being left on the table in the theater business.
Superman Flies, Fantastic Four Falls
As noted earlier, Superman’s success comes partly at the expense of Fantastic Four: First Steps. And that’s a real shame, because both films are so wonderful and reward viewing on the biggest screens possible.
But at this point, Marvel’s “First Family” will struggle to reach $500 million, a tough position to be in as the film setting up the two-part MCU soft-reboot in Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars.
In the end, there were a lot of reasons for Fantastic Four’s disappointing outcome, mostly having to do with the franchise carrying so much negative baggage from past releases and the fact the story was more from a parents/adults perspective as opposed to the kids-first storytelling that won over hearts and minds in Superman.
But the DCU is still celebrating, and rightly so, with Superman a bonafide hit that beat all three of Marvel’s releases this year and Peacemaker right around the corner to keep DC’s 2025 buzz loud and proud, and to carry us into the final months of the year.
Meanwhile, James Gunn is already writing the follow-up non-sequel to his Superman movie, featuring Superman (my guess is a team-up between Superman, Supergirl, and Krypto, and please let it be a Krypto-led movie), and next summer’s Milly Alcock-starring Supergirl from director Craig Gillespie and screenwriter Ana Nogueira has finished filming and just started early marketing with the release of the “Look Out” poster.
Also in 2026 comes a Clayface horror movie directed by James Watkins and written by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, and starring Tom Rhys Harries. Next spring, The Batman: Part II begins production for a 2027 release, while sometime early next year we’ll probably hear more word on a Wonder Woman film and possibly Brave and the Bold (or perhaps Batman and Robin, if the title does change as some suspect might happen).
So we can look forward to many more months of regular DCU successes and updates to bang the drum letting audiences know there’s a whole new superhero world taking shape to deliver the sense of newness and exciting “what’s next?” feeling everyone has been chasing since Avengers: Endgame.
Superman looks to end its run somewhere around $610-615 million. But hey, with plenty of room at the end-of-year holiday box office, perhaps DC Studios will decide to let Superman make one lass flyby. Or maybe what Gunn is really writing is a secret Superman-Supergirl-Krypto Christmas special, just in case you need ideas for what to ask Santa for this year. Hey, we can dream, can’t we?
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2025/08/17/superman-flying-toward-600-million-at-worldwide-box-office/