It’s DC deja vu all over again.

After a promising start to a new DC cinematic universe with a “Superman” reboot last year, the franchise feels imperiled once more as the second film from James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Films, “Supergirl,” stumbled, grossing just $38 million at the domestic box office this weekend and netting poor reviews.

DC fans know this story well. Zack Snyder relaunched DC with the largely well-received “Man of Steel” in 2013, only for the follow-up film in his interconnected DC universe, 2016’s “Batman v. Superman,” to be pummeled by critics and suffer a catastrophic box office drop in its second weekend.

Trouble is, Snyder’s stumble didn’t come amidst Paramount’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, a deal that opens the door to yet another shake-up. (Snyder would later tussle with M&A drama of his own during 2017’s “Justice League,” with AT&T in the midst of acquiring Warner Bros. parent Time Warner.)

“Supergirl” has a reported production budget of $170 million, and insiders say the movie needs to hit $315 million worldwide just to break even. Given the poor reviews and the current box office trajectory, that number looks like it will be very hard to reach.

The $38 million domestic box office launch is just a bit above 2020’s female-fronted DC movie “Birds of Prey,” which opened to $33 million and managed $205 million worldwide, although its run was cut short by the pandemic. Indeed, for a new DC era, “Supergirl” is performing more like the latter DC films that marked the end of the previous regime’s reign — “Blue Beetle” opened to $23 million and grossed just $131 million worldwide, while “The Flash” opened to $55 million and grossed just $271 million.

Those numbers raise serious questions about the future of Gunn’s DC cinematic universe under a new regime. His approach of highlighting lesser known comic book characters, which worked wonders in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with “Guardians of the Galaxy,” doesn’t have the same appeal at a time when mainstream fans are growing weary of comic book adaptations, especially at high budgets. And while the genre has been struggling at the box office the last two years, even graded on a curve, the $68 million global launch for a “Supergirl” movie is not what the new DC wanted.

“While ‘Supergirl’ didn’t meet our box office expectations, it’s just one component of a broader, long-term strategy at DC Studios that we remain confident in,” Safran told the New York Times on Sunday.

To make matters worse, “Supergirl” received a B- CinemaScore, indicating even the hardcore fans that showed up opening weekend weren’t won over by the film.

Its box office trajectory only gets tougher next week, when Universal’s “Minions & Monsters” is due to dominate the landscape alongside “Toy Story 5.” At this point, it’s extremely unlikely “Supergirl” will match “The Flash” by the end of its run, let alone reach the over $300 million needed to break even.

While not directed by Gunn (Craig Gillespie was hand-picked to direct after he pitched on the project), “Supergirl” was chosen by him and Safran as the second DC movie as part of their strategy to build a unified approach to these comics adaptations. It was a somewhat odd choice, made stranger by the fact that the cast failed to net any major movie stars to serve as an extra draw.

The next DC movie, “Clayface,” a scaled-down horror riff that opens in theaters this fall, similarly lacks a movie star.

Some industry insiders who spoke to TheWrap say the problems run deeper than one underperforming film. “All this is, is a Gunn and Safran production deal,” one DC insider said of DC Films’ current trajectory. “It’s not a brand. Announcing a universe was dumb. DC created an expectation and now you have delivered one Superman movie.”

With the Paramount-WBD merger looming, a top agent even questioned whether Gunn survives the fallout. “I don’t know how nervous DC is, but certainly James Gunn should be nervous,” the agent said. “There will always be a DC and the current execs have survived previous regime changes, but I don’t think Gunn survives.”

A Warner Bros. insider pushed back on concern over Gunn and Safran’s larger strategy or any potential leadership changes to be made by Ellison, reiterating that they have a 10-year DC plan and “Supergirl” was just a single-film miss. The insider said the studio is “disappointed” with the film’s performance, adding the character “didn’t connect.”

Demographic data bears this out: 59% of the opening weekend “Supergirl” audience was male and 65% was over the age of 25, which shows that the target audience for a “Supergirl” movie — Gen Z women — didn’t show up.

“‘Supergirl’ missed on a lot of levels,” the WB insider acknowledged, while another studio insider underlined the biggest problem: you can’t launch a non-A-tier superhero with a budget this big anymore, the bar for profitability is too high.

Yet another DC reboot

DC Studios was born out of chaos.

After Gunn and Safran took over DC in 2023, hand-selected by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, they laid out their plans to finally make this work. It came at a fraught time for the brand, as Snyder’s DCEU sputtered out after he was ousted during the making of “Justice League,” and a power vacuum led to a scattered strategy that at one point positioned The Rock as the center of its cinematic universe.

With the box office disappointment of The Rock’s “Black Adam,” audiences quickly rejected that notion.

Gunn and Safran promised fans things would be different, namely because they would oversee everything. “It is the first time ever that everything DC-related – film, television, live-action, animation, gaming — is all centralized under one creative vision, that of James and myself,” Safran explained to press in 2023.

And Gunn would take the reins himself. He not only directed the first film “Superman,” but also wrote the entirety of the HBO Max series “Peacemaker” – two seasons worth – and the animated series “Creature Commandos.”

Gunn also touted lessons learned from his time at Marvel, saying no DC movie would ever be greenlit without a locked screenplay.

“We are not going to be making movies before the screenplay is finished. And if that means our plan has to shift a little bit, well, it’s going to happen,” Gunn said at the same presentation in 2023. “We’re not going to be making movies and putting hundreds of millions of dollars into a film where a screenplay is only two thirds of the way done and we have to finish it while we’re making the movie. I’ve seen it happen again and again and it’s a mess. And I think it’s the primary reason for the deterioration and quality of films today, versus 20, 30 years ago.”

They laid out 10 projects that would make up the bulk of their initial launch, starting with a Gunn written and directed “Superman.”

Stumbling blocks

“Superman” was a resounding success. Gunn’s casting of David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan and Nicholas Hoult was praised by all, and the film was a hit with both fans and critics, grossing $618 million worldwide and earning brownie points from Zaslav himself. The film was also notable for being the highest-grossing superhero film of 2025 — and, crucially, outgrossing every single Marvel release that year. It’s the first time this has happened since 2008, when “The Dark Knight” grossed over a billion worldwide.

But while “The Penguin” was a critical and commercial hit for HBO, the second season of “Peacemaker” failed to make much of a splash on the TV side, despite positive reviews, and some of the planned movies started hitting road bumps. 

“The Brave and the Bold,” a fresh take on Batman focusing on his relationship with a young Robin and originally the second film in the lineup, was announced in 2023 but still has yet to materialize. To make matters more complicated, Matt Reeves’ follow-up “The Batman: Part II” kept hitting delays due to slow progress on the script, a matter outside of Gunn’s control. Production is finally underway on the sequel, which stands outside the continuity of Gunn’s DC universe but is still under his purview and will hit theaters in 2027. But juggling development of “Brave and the Bold” with Reeves’ film was tricky – two Batmans at once? Probably not a great idea.

Gunn also lined up Luca Guadagnino to direct and Colin Farrell to star in a “Sgt. Rock” movie, but the plug was pulled in pre-production due to script issues. The film remains in development, but will not move forward with Guadagnino, Gunn said.

And then there’s “Supergirl.”

What went wrong with “Supergirl”

The development of “Supergirl,” by most accounts, went pretty smoothly. But a red flag may have been raised when production had trouble securing an actor for the movie’s villain Krem. Several A-listers passed on the role, according to several knowledgeable insiders, and Gillespie opted to cast Matthias Schoenaerts in the role. While not necessarily a household name in the U.S., the hope was that the Belgian actor would help draw in some of the international audience. Given the film’s paltry $30 million international box office, that did not happen.

Combined with relative newcomer Milly Alcock in the titular role, the film lacked the star power that propelled a big opening weekend for something like “Batman v. Superman” (Ben Affleck) or even “Man of Steel” (Amy Adams, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Michael Shannon) in past DC permutations.

The biggest star in “Supergirl” is Jason Momoa, who played Aquaman in the previous iteration of the DC universe and now lets his freak flag fly as the unpredictable comic character Lobo. But his inclusion was seen by many as a transparent attempt to woo men to see the film, and a concern that women alone could not carry the movie at the box office. This, despite the fact that 2017’s “Wonder Woman” was critically praised and grossed over $800 million (that female-fronted superhero movie was also directed by a woman, while “Supergirl” was not).

The scathing reviews for “Supergirl” didn’t help. TheWrap’s critic, who dinged the muddled action and “casual sexism” of Momoa’s Lobo.

What’s next

Hitting theaters this fall is “Clayface,” a horror-tinged DC movie at a much lower budget of around $40 million. This film was not part of Gunn’s initial plans, but it jumped the line when acclaimed “Doctor Sleep” and “Haunting of Hill House” filmmaker Mike Flanagan submitted a script he wrote on spec. Flanagan was too busy to direct himself, so the project went to “Speak No Evil” filmmaker James Watkins and subsequently went through script revisions, with Hossein Amini (“Drive”) earning a screenplay credit.

Welsh actor Tom Rhys Harries stars as the comic book character who is transformed into a literal clay man, gaining the ability to shapeshift. The supporting cast includes Max Minghella and Naomi Ackie. The Warner Bros. insider told TheWrap that the studio is high on the movie, which this individual described as “terrifying.”

Gunn is in production on his “Superman” sequel “Man of Tomorrow,” which brings back Hoult’s Lex Luthor to team up with Corenswet’s Superman to fight off the Big Bad Brainiac. But yet again he cast a largely unknown actor in the prime villain role: German actor Lars Eidinger.

Perhaps the buzziest DC project on the current docket is “Lanterns,” an HBO series starring Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre that’s been described as a “True Detective”-like take on the Green Lantern mythology premiering in August. Adding a heap of goodwill to the project is the involvement of Damon Lindelof, who spearheaded the Emmy juggernaut DC adaptation “Watchmen” for HBO a few years ago.

After that, it’s unclear. An individual with knowledge told TheWrap that DC is prioritizing a Bane/Deathstroke movie, but the project doesn’t have a director or cast lined up yet. And while “Man of Tomorrow” is due to hit theaters in July 2027, it remains to be seen how Ellison will survey the DC landscape if he takes over Warner Bros. and how heavily he may be inclined to shake things up.

For now, “Supergirl” appears to be DOA. All eyes on “Clayface.”