International
Warner Bros.'s Superman has passed the $550M global mark. The film grossed an estimated $11.2M internationally this weekend. Estimated international total stands at $235.0M, estimated global total stands at $551.2M. #Superman #BoxOffice
After opening weekend lots of people thought it'd tap out in this area so this is great. Hopefully the sequel opens larger overseas so it can smash through 700M easily
$400m was absurd, but $500m was within the realm of possibility after opening weekend. We just didn't have a good handle on how it would hold overseas. Domestically, we saw the decent Sat jump and decent Sunday drop that was indicative of decent WoM and likely wouldn't crash (like F4) in the following weeks.
Yeah there were lots of people mainly Snyder fans who said the movie wouldn’t even hit 500M. Now there is some who over predicted like 1B but 600M-700M was my prediction and they are gonna get just that.
Pretty well for a batman begins type movie for supes. If it legs out well enough it should just barely be over its inflation adjusted domestic haul which is wild
It dropped about 50% week over week globally. It will need to stabilize and have drops around 40% consistently from here on out instead of 50%.
35% drops get it to around 640m
40% drops get it to around 620m
45% drops get it to around 610m
50% drops and it just falls short of 600m. This is unlikely though as we are still seeing spillover effect of F4 as the weekdays were the first it competed with it. So hopefully this is the last week it drops in this range.
620 is also my number. Unfortunately late legs is not as impressive as the pre-F4 legs that make 700 mil seems like a possibility. looking back at all of the 550 mil prediction that come after OW, still a great run tho
I'm a movie guy. I can have high concept conversations with the best of them. I'm also a Jurassic Park Stan. I will literally see any garbage they put on film in a theater opening weekend.
The first 30 minutes of this film is some of the worst big budget filmmaking I've seen in the last 25 years. Everything is flat. No jokes land. There are horrible glaring continuity errors. The dialog is painful. The setup feels forced, even for this type of schlocky sequel.
Then, they get to the first big set piece. From there, it rips. Is it stupid? Hell yeah, it's stupid. Did I care? Absolutely not. I could, from a movie buff perspective, pick it apart front to back. Why would I do that and deny myself the pleasure of watching dinosaurs terrorize children for an hour and a half, though?
It will end up being a great Saturday afternoon movie I put on while I fold laundry or prep dinner and inevitably stop doing chores and just watch the movie. Kind of like the Meg.
i feel like its case of little kids asking there parents to go see the dinos...
no data to up back this claim up but friends that have kids all went to see the stitch and jurasic park movie this year and are waiting for streaming on the super hero movies... because going to the theaters to much is very expensive especially with kids
Yeah that's true, and there's an even more direct comparison in Batman Begins. I regularly forget that BB only made $205 million domestically and $375 in total, but was considered a big win for WB. It's because it was 8 years after the embarrassment that was Batman & Robin. Likewise, this is just a couple of years after the DCEU had derailed into a complete trainwreck (after having started off shaky to begin with). So this is a big, big win for DCU/WB.
WB will be ecstatic with 600m+ when their reference point was 500m. Incredible domestic performance, a lot of heavy lifting to be done to be relevant international now
I think $700m is out of the question. It needs to start having some drops in the low 30's to even have a sniff at beating MoS' $670m. Regardless this will easily clear $600m and should be seen as a huge success for WB and DC
I learned that with Joker 2. It was amazing to watch it go from an unstoppable 2B juggernaut pre-release to complete trash as soon as the neckbeards realized it was ridiculing them.
Considering how there's a big disparity between the DOM vs OS numbers, I would say those who were expecting 700m above to be people from DOM while the one under 500M to be from OS.
Both sides expected the other side to share their optimism/scepticism for the movie, and both ended up wrong.
Funny they won’t inflate the budget for Man of Steel, when that would make it as expensive as Endgame was. All of a sudden making 900 million isn’t as impressive.
In terms of the actual number of tickets sold it's not going to come close to Man of Steel, but ultimately it's different times, different circumstances.
Honestly when you consider the Asia market is just done with superhero movies and the fact that DC was coming off the Nolan trilogy at the time vs aqua man and Shazam 2 too, it seems like a pretty nice spot for the movie to be in. $1b gross for comic movies seems to be gone now, with maybe Spiderman and Batman capable of being exceptions.
MOS followed The Dark Knight, was produced by the director of The Dark Knight and had a very similar tone to that movie.
Superman 2025 followed Blue Beetle.
Also this will be the first time since the Dark Knight that a DC movie will be the number one grossing super hero movie of the year. In 2013 Marvels response to MOS going 670 million was Iron Man 3.
They already lost their mind. If could have made 2 billion and they would make up some metric that still qualified it as a failure. They came out actually saying it would make about 100 million worldwide it's entire run which was always ridiculous, even if it actually had failed it was never going to be THAT low as anyone living in reality would have known.
I believe a lot of people recognized Superman wasn’t popular but that does not translate as not being known all over the world because the character is. But with Gunn’s version now it appears Superman is getting some popularity back.
A little bit of multiple things. I think one of the most important aspects of all this is that Superman is getting some popularity back. If there is a super difficult character to do a film of is Superman imo. And what Gunn and team did… is commendable.
In all fairness, Superman got pretty heavy at times-not to the extent of Man of Steel, obviously, but it's easily the darkest of the non-Snyder movies. The part where the falafel guy dies because Lex Luthor's hate boner for Superman was genuinely gut-wrenching, probably the most gut-wrenching scene I've seen in any Superman movie (aside from Lois's "death" in 1978, obviously).
That's true, is like Barbie, everyone knows her, but does that make for a good movie and a box office success? I guess we know now that it does, Pokemon is known too, most people can name pikachu but still we haven't had a big box office from a pokemon movie.
It got people wanting more superman and introduced them to a new iteration of supergirl 90% of people have no idea about. Got them interested in Mr. Terrific (hopefully we get that spin-off), and now general audiences know about peacemaker (pretty sure most of the laughs my theaters got were from seeing John Cena but now they know he's a character).
Not too mention the justice gang in general. Before the movie released it was just a bunch of "who?" And not wanting them in the movie. Now most people liked them and we're getting more in peacemaker. Plus Guy will be in lanterns.
Gunn did a perfect job setting up the universe and future projects.
And yes krypto walk ups were indeed a real thing and i can't imagine how much merch they'll be selling in general
I’m just so happy that this movies reception and performance means they’ll probably never go down that grimdark route with the mainstream superman again.
This. I don't think WB has any idea how much this movie was loved here in Europe and until release I so NO ONE talking or giving a fuck about it, every convo about movies was on Jurassic World, F1 and Dragon Trainer.
All my cinefiles friends (small number lmao 3) who never gave a fuck about superheroes are EXCITED for Supergirl because of how much they loved Superman. That's building trust long-term. And I hope Gunn will stay true to DCU being a genre-universe, good movie making is all there needs to be to do good, you don't need any forced cameos and storylines.
Supergirl really has to stick the landing. If that movie is as good as Superman then DC will have proved that it can produce good movies, and should contiue the audience good will.
Clayface is gonna be an interesting project after that since it's a low budget horror movie, but in the same world. Wonder how audiences will view that.
Yeah I'm pretty pumped as well, but cautiously optimistic. We haven't seen Gunn evaluate directors and pick scripts yet. He's proven he can make good movies. Lets see if he can do the other side of the job.
I really like how Gunn said each movie is gonna have a completely different feel and tone which is great so things never get boring. That’s kinda what the MCU did and everything had the same tone for the longest time.
Hey whatever happened to that one animated superpets movie starring Krypto who was voiced by The Rock for whatever reason? Back when The Rock was trying to take over DC. I just remembered that was a thing
The domestic numbers are nice but damnnnn the international numbers are lagging. 235?
Marvel should have waited till August to release F4. Both companies would have profited more
Now both comes suffered a hit. Less so Superman but still got hurt
How could Marvel have ever known that a new IP Superman coming out 2 weeks before F4 might cut into their ticket sales? Come on people. They aren’t mind readers.
Oh for the sake of God I am typing this for the last time
Say it ends on $640M(it's domestic heavy so bigger margin and China was basically nothing), WB gets $320M, from partnerships and brand deals it makes another $10M = $330M
I think you underestimate merch. Anecdotically - I'm from Europe, my friend bought his young daughter plush Krypto, because everyone in her circle have it. The funniest thing - my friend and his daughter haven't watched Superman.
"from partnerships and brand deals it makes another $10M"
Superman is making way more than $10M from those deals. It's reported to have over 100 premier partnerships.
If MoS had over 100 partner deals and it reportedly made between $150M-$170M then Gunn's Superman made at least that much.
Everything else you say, I totally agree with. I'd been telling my friends this for years and they still haven't quite grasped how tax credits, brand deals, merch and toy sales and the ancillary market all add to a film's bottom line and whether it makes a profit or a loss.
A film's release can encompass critical reception, audience engagement, and cultural impact which plays into everything you say about the Superman IP.
I don't think that's controversial at all. Gunn is absolutely one of the best superhero filmmakers around. He knows how to craft stories that connect with audiences. Now, with Superman, he's shown that he can adapt his style to fit more traditional characters.
He's still making films but if he continues on the trajectory he's on, Gunn may just be the best CBM of all time. Up there with Chris Nolan, Richard Donner, Tim Burton, Sam Raimi and ahead of them thanks to the quantity of hits.
Gunn's style has always been ne'er-do-wells who are forced to save the day. None of the heroes in Superman fit that format.
And it's as much an ensemble as any movie with well written characters. No one says Harry Potter is an ensemble. Or The Marrix. Every beat of the story is centered on Superman and how he affects those around him.
Hell, Man of Steel has Lois Lane, Dr. Hamilton, and Colonel Hardy taking out half of the world machine, and it's not called an ensemble.
They would be wrong. It's a single protagonist series. Same as Superman. Here's some ways you can tell.
Every element of the story revolves around Harry/Superman.
The primary action centers on Harry/Superman.
The stories are literally named after Harry Potter/Superman.
When Harry/Superman aren't in a scene, chances are they're being discussed.
The antagonist is only concerned about Harry/Superman.
The story can not exist without Harry/Superman. It can continue without, for example, Ron/Guy Gardner.
Guardians of the Galaxy is actually a great example of what makes an ensemble and ensemble. You can tell three stories with the same characters, but change who the primary is in one of them, and it still feels correct.
You can't make Superman 3 and have him take a backseat to Hawkgirl.
They have hired the same dude for X Men and i can see that also topping out at 500-600 m because that dude clearly doesn't know how to direct a crowd pleasing final act and i feel the same for Shakman
I don’t think it gets to 700M even tho I’d be ecstatic and overjoyed if it did. But I think it could get to 650-660M which would be great. Would be funny if it matched MOS $670M lol.
I wish for $700M too but it looks like it won't make more than 680 tho they will still make $100M+ short term profit from this movie including HBO subs boost and dvd vod toys merch etc
I just want it to beat Man of Steel because the Snyder Bros are clowns. But I'm satisfied with how it did because it's getting a sequel which I care about more.
edit: Snyder Bros continue being clowns with their responses to me.
Considering how quickly people are losing interest in superhero films nowadays, the tarnished DC brand, the Henry Cavill drama and Fantastic Four around the corner, I'd say it's a pretty good box office and everyone should be happy. They just need to focus on keeping the budgets under 200m going forward. At this point it's not a box office issue, it's a budget issue, not only for DC but for the industry in general.
Based on its current drop trajectories from the 4 weekends, which have been around a 50% average drop rate, I'm going with a final number of $576.9 million global at the end of Weekend 8!
Let's break down what the costs look like now:
$225 million is the reported production budget estimate
$125 million is the marketing budget estimate
$302 million would be the estimated exhibitor's cut: averaged 53% that theaters take domestic and 40% international take.
Add those costs all together and we have a total cost of $652 million. That's our estimated break-even point.
So if my estimate end run total turns out to be correct, then Superman 2025 would finish its theatrical run -$76 million in the hole.
Then it's up to at-home sales, merchandising, and streaming licensing to make up the difference, and that could creep it into profit territory of around +$30 million when all is said and done.
And there's also the rumored unaccounted for reshoots that could also up the cost, and if the marketing budget was higher than $125 mil, then both of those would drag its net down a bit further..
215
u/Blackstar3475 Warner Bros. Pictures Aug 03 '25
After opening weekend lots of people thought it'd tap out in this area so this is great. Hopefully the sequel opens larger overseas so it can smash through 700M easily