Supergirl is a box office catastrophe. How can Marvel and DC save the superhero movie?

It’s sometimes hard to believe that modern Superman movies existed for nearly four decades before the Man of Steel met Batman on the big screen. Since 2008, when Iron Man first clanged into life, we’ve become used to superhero cinema as one giant, interlocking machine: capes, gods, aliens and magic rocks all rattling around the same cosmic pinball table. There have been dozens of these comic book films, often built around characters once little known to the average cinemagoer: Rocket Raccoon, Ant-Man, Blue Beetle.

Until recently, audiences lapped up each new arrival like an all-you-can-eat superhero buffet. It felt as if there would always be another dusty helmet, glowing cube or giant talking tree waiting in the great comic book attic to be transformed into a billion-dollar proposition. Nobody expected the well to run dry this soon. Which brings us somewhat awkwardly to Supergirl’s disastrous box office.

The new DC Studios film, starring Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El, opened to just $38m in North America and about $68m worldwide last weekend, grim figures for a film reportedly costing around $170m, before marketing spend. This has been seen as a crisis for James Gunn’s new DCU, just two films in. But the more interesting question may be whether Supergirl has exposed a problem that now stretches far beyond a single comic book studio.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe trained audiences to believe minor characters mattered, because they were stepping stones to something colossal: a major team-up like the Avengers movies, or at least the next link in an exciting chain of intrigue. But when a film such as Supergirl fails to pick up momentum, the difficulty becomes apparent – and we could say the same about Marvel’s Eternals, the Sony live action Spider-Verse films such as Madame Web, or even DC’s The Flash.

Superhero cinematic universes are built to expand, with each addition contributing to the overall sense of a vast fictional Lego set. When one of the pieces doesn’t fit, it is hard to encourage fans to bother with the next instalment. Does Supergirl now turn up in the forthcoming Man of Tomorrow to prove to the wider world that she does care about more than Krypto and getting drunk? That may be one way forward, if Gunn’s mooted sequel to last year’s Superman is a smash hit.

It also makes it more likely that DC, which has already trashed one entire comic book universe, will pivot towards better-known superheroes. Andy Muschietti, director of the It films, has been tapped to helm a Batman: The Brave and the Bold movie that will exist within the main continuity (Robert Pattinson’s version lives in his own version of Gotham, and will never meet Superman or Wonder Woman). There will also be increased pressure on projects such as the forthcoming superhero-horror hybrid Clayface, even if the latter isn’t burdened with a large budget or any real requirement to feed into wider matters. Could the future of DC now just be Superman and Batman movies, with the occasional cheaper “Elseworlds” offshoot, while everyone sits tight and waits for someone else to rebuild confidence?

If so, this is hardly the start that Gunn and his studio co-head Peter Safran would have wanted. Will we ever see movies such as James Mangold’s Swamp Thing, or the proposed films based on Teen Titans, and Bane and Deathstroke? Safran has said that nothing has changed post-Supergirl, but studio Warner Bros may see things differently if Supergirl really is on course to lose $100m.

And yet the bigger headache, oddly, could belong to Marvel. Sony has already pretty much ruined any chance for characters such as Kraven the Hunter, Morbius or Madame Web to enter Spider-Man’s MCU world. But if audiences simply switch off when superheroes other than the obvious big names get their own titles, how would that affect the climactic team-up movies that have made the studio billions at the box office? Will anyone care if Shang-Chi steps up to strangle Doctor Doom in Secret Wars if the ring-wielding hero’s last solo movie came out six years previously? There are already noticeably fewer comic book films in cinemas than there were just a few years ago, and former Disney CEO Bob Iger has indicated that the constant flurry of Disney+ spin-offs will also be reined in. Moreover, the reduced quality of superhero movies generally will eventually damage the entire rickety machine.

Naysayers will no doubt rejoice. But it will be a sad irony if the very thing that made such films inspiring in the first place – the ability to see Spider-Man exchanging badinage with Iron Man and Thor in the middle of some vast, multiversal punch-up – ends up being what dooms the superhero cinematic universe era altogether.