‘Superman' Just Hit $400 Million: Is That Bad Or Good, In Context?

Forbes

a day ago

Superman
As the latest numbers from over the weekend have come in, the DCU's Superman has just crossed $400 million at the global box office. It's a big number! It's not as big as some other superhero numbers! So it may be a bit difficult to parse if Superman is performing poorly, great or somewhere in between.
Right now, things seem to be landing on 'good enough' to 'actually good,' if we're zooming out in the context of the industry. The highlights:
With these current numbers, given how the trajectory its on, Superman is said to likely end its run with $650 to $700 million. James Gunn previously shot down reports that Superman 'needed' $700 million to be a success, and the true figure was much lower than that. It's not official, but break-even for a movie like this is probably around $400 million, which it has already hit.
Hard-to-please WB CEO, David Zaslav, raved about the film and its performance after release: This weekend, we watched Superman soar as James Gunn's passion and vision came to life on the big screen. Superman is just the first step,' Zaslav said. 'Over the next year alone, DC Studios will introduce the films Supergirl and Clayface in theaters and the series Lanterns on HBO Max, all part of a bold 10-year plan. The DC vision is clear, the momentum is real, and I couldn't be more excited for what's ahead.'
Superman
Next, if we want to look at the context of the 'birth' of various superhero universes, we have:
Albeit inflation does come into effect here. In the context of the current superhero movies that are being released, exclusively on the Marvel side, Superman will beat out the likes of recent bombs or underperformers like Captain America: Brave New World ($415 million), Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ($475 million), Thunderbolts ($382 million) and The Marvels ($206 million, yeesh). That said, this is Superman we're talking about, so you'd hope it would. And Marvel still has some monsters in them like Deadpool and Wolverine ($1.3 billion). An interesting comparison point will be the imminent launch of a very important MCU movie, Fantastic Four, out this week.
We are also simply out of the ultimate peak of superhero movies, which resulted in somewhat bizarre achievements like just-okay films like Aquaman and Captain Marvel grossing $1.1 billion each in 2018-2019. Where the market is now, I'd be surprised if either got half that if they were released today. So standards have changed at least to some extent.
All this said, I think it's safe to say that Superman is a success given the state of the market and it being a brand-new introduction to a comic-based universe, as it can take time to pick up steam especially, after a mostly bad universe that just ended right before it. Now, we'll see how Supergirl does.
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