Supergirl box office projections keep falling, and it’s starting to look like The Flash
It opened the season pegged at $55 million-plus. Now analysts are floating a $39 million low. We’ve watched a DC movie melt like this on the way to release before, and that one at least had Michael Keaton’s Batman to sell.
The numbers on Supergirl are going the wrong direction, and they’re not stopping.
When tracking first opened, Deadline had Milly Alcock‘s Kara Zor-El pegged for a domestic debut north of $55 million. Every update since has shaved a little more off. It slid to around $51 million, then settled into a $45 to $55 million range, and now Box Office Theory is floating a downside scenario as low as $39 million.
That’s a number that didn’t exist in this conversation a month ago.
A steady slide, not a stumble
Here’s the part that should worry Warner Bros., and it’s the shape of the drop more than the drop itself.
A movie can take a bad tracking hit and recover. What Supergirl is doing is sliding a little further every single week as the release date gets closer, which is the opposite of how this is supposed to go. The closer you get to opening, the more locked-in the audience interest usually is.
This one keeps leaking.
The $51 million figure isn’t just one bearish outlet, either. Puck’s Matthew Belloni reported the same number this week, citing the firm NRG, so the slide is showing up across the people who do this for a living, not just the fan sites.
And $39 million, if it lands anywhere near there, would open below The Marvels, the $47 million debut that became Marvel’s shorthand for superhero fatigue.
We’ve seen a DC movie melt like this before
If the pattern feels familiar, it should. This is almost exactly what happened to The Flash.
That one started with wildly optimistic projections too, some of them well into nine figures, riding early buzz and a “best superhero movie ever” quote Warner was happy to let circulate. Then the number came down. And down. By the time it actually opened in June 2023, it landed at $55 million and is now remembered as one of the most expensive box office failures the old DC regime ever produced.
So a DC tentpole watching its tracking erode week after week on the way to release isn’t new. We have the receipt.
The difference is the safety net, and Supergirl doesn’t have one
But here’s where the comparison gets interesting, because the two movies aren’t melting from the same height.
The Flash had a gimmick to sell, and it was a big one: Michael Keaton back in the cowl as Batman for the first time since 1992, plus a multiverse stuffed with cameos. Whatever you thought of the movie, that footage gave Warner a thing to put in every trailer, the kind of nostalgia hook that pulls in people who don’t read tracking reports. And The Flash still opened at $55 million.
Supergirl doesn’t have a Keaton. It has Alcock, who’s earning real praise, and Jason Momoa‘s Lobo, who’s getting strong early reactions, but no decades-old legacy hook to bait the casual crowd. It’s a relatively unknown lead in a franchise that’s one year and one fine-not-amazing Superman into a hard reboot. If $39 million is even on the table for a movie carrying the most famous surname in comics, that’s the absence of a safety net showing up in the math.
The Toy Story problem on top of everything
And the calendar is rubbing salt in it.
Supergirl opens June 26, the same weekend Pixar’s Toy Story 5 hits its second lap after a debut tracking north of $140 million. Run the math on a normal Pixar hold and Toy Story 5‘s second weekend alone clears Supergirl‘s entire opening. So the most likely outcome is Kara debuting at number two, losing her own opening weekend to a cartoon that’s already been out a week.
None of this is destiny. The first reactions are genuinely positive, and strong word of mouth could firm the number up between now and Friday. A movie people like can outrun bad tracking.
But tracking that falls this steadily, this close to release, usually knows something, and the last time we watched a DC movie do this exact slide, it had Batman in its back pocket and still belly-flopped.
Supergirl is making the same descent with less to break the fall.
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Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
Hat Tips:
Box Office Theory (June 18, 2026), verified for the slide from the $45–$55 million range to a $39 million downside scenario and the original tracking history
Puck, via Matthew Belloni (June 18, 2026), verified for the $51 million NRG tracking figure, corroborating the decline beyond a single outlet
Deadline (2026), verified for the original $55 million-plus opening projection and the $175 million net production cost
Box Office Mojo, verified for The Flash’s $55 million June 2023 opening, The Marvels’ $47 million debut, and Superman’s $122–125 million 2025 opening
ComicBookMovie and TechTimes (June 2026), verified for the positive first reactions, the Toy Story 5 calendar conflict, and the test-screening and runtime history