[#item_full_content] [[{“value”:”The current weekend: June 26 to 28, 2026
1) Supergirl opening
– This is a weak opening for a new superhero film. The weekend figure is below average for the genre, with lukewarm critics’ reviews and audience scores (a B- CinemaScore).
Among recent superhero movies with female leads, the est. opening is roughly half of Black Widow ($81.4 million in July 2021), but better than Madame Web (a dismal $15.3m in Feb 2024):
Female superheroes
– Three female superheroes arrived with a lot of fanfare and success between 2016 and 2019. Those were prime years for all superhero films — everything seemed to work:
DC Comics’ Suicide Squad with Margot Robbie made $747 million worldwide in August 2016;
DC Comics’ Wonder Woman with Gal Gadot finished with $822m in August 2017;
and Marvel’s Captain Marvel with Brie Larson earned $1.13 billion in March 2019.
– What happened next was unprecedented. When the stories returned with sequels, they crashed in stunning fashion, down -74% to -82%. They were disasters.
You’ll hear general explanations like “the audience lost interest.” Yes, they did. But no one has been able to explain why it happened so suddenly and so completely. Why female superheroes in particular, after their sensational starts? We don’t understand it either.
Audiences turned on female superheroes during the pandemic, and Supergirl is opening in the same cold environment. There’s no improvement here.
All superhero movies
– Today, the new normal for superheroes is 4 titles per year, instead of 7. On average, annual superhero BO is down approx. -$3.5 billion — it’s half, or less, of what it was during the heady days of 2019-2018-2017.
The drop in superhero BO is 46% of everything Hollywood is trying to recover — and starting to do a good job of it — following the pandemic.
Relatively speaking, 2026 is going to be a respectable year for the genre because of two upcoming giant sequels: Spider-Man: Brand New Day (on July 31, the 9th Spider-Man), and Avengers: Doomsday (#5, in mid-December):”}]] 
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