‘Superman’ and dc studios fly to a $122 million opening
In a bid to kick off a new era for DC Studios, James Gunn’s Superman opened with $122 million in US and Canada ticket sales over the weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. DC and Warner Bros. had a lot riding on Superman. While the Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel Studios has had its own share of struggles, the superheroes of DC have recently found mostly kryptonite in theaters. Films like Joker: Folie à Deux, The Flash, and Shazam! Fury of the Gods all flopped. But Superman, written and directed by Gunn, is intended as a new start. It’s the first release fully steered by Gunn and Peter Safran, co-heads of DC Studios since they were handed the keys to DC’s superhero cinematic universe. And while Gunn turned Guardians of the Galaxy into a massive success for Marvel, his irreverent idiosyncratic touch made the director – once a B-movie filmmaker with Troma Entertainment – an unlikely steward for one of the movies’ most bankable and beloved brands. The roughly on-target opening was the third largest of 2025 and the first DC title to surpass $100 million in its opening weekend since Wonder Woman in 2017.
Ticket sales were relatively soft for Superman overseas. In 78 international markets, it grossed $95 million. In China, it collected just $6.6 million. As an American icon, Superman inevitably attracted political discourse. Some right-wing commentators criticized the movie as woke after Gunn described the superhero from Krypton as an immigrant. On X, the White House posted an image of President Donald Trump as Superman.
In Superman, which cost about $225 million to make, Gunn steers the Man of Steel in a drastically different tonal direction than in previous iterations from filmmaker Zack Snyder. Skipping the Kansas origin story, the film instead picks up with Superman (David Corenswet) after his first defeat. Rachel Brosnahan plays Lois Lane, and Nicholas Hoult is Lex Luthor. The Superman debut didn’t come close to besting the $166 million launch for Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in 2016. But it did open higher, not accounting for inflation, than Snyder’s Man of Steel. That film debuted with $116 million in 2013. But while Snyder’s films were often unloved by critics, largely good reviews greeted Gunn’s Superman. On Rotten Tomatoes, it scored 82 percent fresh – the best for the franchise since the first two movies with Christopher Reeve: Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980). Audiences gave it an A- CinemaScore.
Superman faced sizeable competition too. Last week’s top film, Jurassic World Rebirth, slid to second place with $40 million. With Superman soaking up many large-format screens, Universal Pictures’ seventh Jurassic film slipped a steep 57 percent from its opening weekend. Starring Scarlett Johansson, Jurassic World Rebirth got off to a thunderous $318.3 million global start. In two weeks, it’s amassed $529.5 million worldwide. Also still in the mix is Apple Studios’ biggest box-office success yet, F1. Joseph Kosinski’s Formula One action thriller starring Brad Pitt came in third with $13 million in its third weekend. The film, distributed by Warner Bros., has collected $393.4 million globally in three weeks. But it also carries a hefty price tag of roughly $250 million plus at least $100 million in promotion.
