Will the New Superman Movie Break the Hero’s Box Office Curse?

It’s hard to pin down what the general public wants from their Superman adaptations. The Big Blue Boy Scout has been plenty successful on television. Smallville ran for ten seasons. Superman & Lois managed to eek out four seasons despite the end of the universe and, essentially, the network it was a part of. Lois & Clark hit four seasons, as well as being a bit of a cultural phenomenon. Hell, Superman animated shows have also performed well, with a new show currently doing well on Cartoon Network, despite it being another dying network.

On film? Superman hasn’t been as lucky. There’s an argument to be made that the 1978 Richard Donner-made Superman: The Movie was his most successful outing to date. It soared at the box office and made Christopher Reeve a star. Every sequel he made did worse (though that was more par for the course at the time). Reeve made four films, and Supes wouldn’t hit the big screen again for almost twenty years, doing so in a spiritual sequel called Superman Returns, which wildly underperformed, critically and commercially. I remember people saying it was boring because Superman didn’t really fight anyone, when he finally did, people didn’t like that either.

Superman’s spotty movie history didn’t help Man of Steel’s chances. I’ve always said that, were the same story released as a graphic novel, it would have done much better. People didn’t want a subversive take on the character, despite rejecting a more straightforward take just seven years earlier. Then Batman v Superman came out, and people treated it like the death of movies (except my boy Jay Baruchel). Despite a negative reception to the Cavill/Snyder Superman, there were still complaints that he wasn’t in the marketing for the Justice League movie. When it was said definitively that he would be in the film, that didn’t help ticket sales (but there was… a lot going on).

Still, someone saw value in Cavill’s Superman, and that was Dwayne The Rock Johnson. He plotted to have Cavill appear at the end of Black Adam, the movie that was going to shift the power of the DCU or whatever nonsense he kept saying. The man was so sure the appearance would help, he spoiled the appearance within days of the film’s release. Surprise: it did not help! Black Adam barely made back its budget, and control of the DCU was wrestled away from the man who was The Rock and given to James Gunn and Peter Safran.

The duo has been put in charge of kicking off a whole new cinematic universe for DC Comics. The first film that is officially kicking off their new interconnected universe? Superman. As I’ve laid out so far, it’s hardly the safest bet. Gunn has had success with superhero movies, but can he succeed with one that people can’t make up their minds about? Can he make a version of Superman that everybody likes (or is at least interested in)? Early projections suggest that it may be the case.

We are a month away from the release of Gunn’s new film, with tickets going on sale yesterday. According to Fandango, the new movie is the best advanced seller of 2025 through Amazon early access, beating out Fantastic Four: First Steps. There is “buzz” that the film will have a $100 million opening weekend, but I don’t know where that buzz could be coming from, and seemingly, neither does Deadline. That being said, the studio could be working in overdrive to make Superman already appear successful, in the hopes that audiences will want to be part of the excitement. It makes sense because a lot is riding on this.

I don’t think Superman being a massive failure is possible, but I don’t think it has to fail that big to end the Gunn/Safran era before it starts. Warner Bros. Discovery (or whatever the hell it will be called by the end of the summer) needs a win, and if it doesn’t get one, it may get desperate. Because you know Zaslav is just waiting in the wings to replace Gunn with a Gen AI model called Daddy Zaz’s Story Spinner (allegedly).