Supergirl cuts 25 minutes before hitting theaters, opening tracking is not great
DC’s June 26 release locked a 107-minute runtime after months of test screenings, three endings, and three composers, per World of Reel. Opening tracking sits around $55 million.
Supergirl arrives in two weeks as a noticeably smaller movie than the one DC was testing in January. The official runtime is locked at 1 hour and 47 minutes including credits, confirmed by an Irish Film Classification Office listing at 107 minutes and 55 seconds.
According to World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy, the cut that screened in January ran 2 hours and 5 minutes before credits. Do the math and roughly 25 minutes of movie came out in five months.
That makes Supergirl one of DC’s shortest theatrical features, and the first DC film to come in under two hours since Birds of Prey in 2020.
Why the movie got shorter
Nobody official has said. But the production history does a lot of talking.
Ruimy reports the film test-screened more than ten times, with three different endings shown to audiences, the most recent at a California screening last week that reportedly included additional Clark Kent scenes. Director Craig Gillespie has repeatedly denied rumors that James Gunn creatively interfered, though neither has detailed who drove the recuts.
The score tells the same story from a different angle, and this part is fully on the record. Ramin Djawadi, who worked with Gillespie on Fright Night, was announced as composer in December 2025.
By February he was out and Junkie XL was in. By March, a Warner Bros. press release quietly listed Claudia Sarne as the composer. Three composers in four months is not what post-production looks like when everyone agrees on the movie.
There’s a less dramatic factor too. A 107-minute runtime fits an extra showtime per screen per day compared to a 130-minute one, and for a film that needs every ticket it can sell, exhibitors notice. Whether that arithmetic drove the trims or just sweetened them is a question Warner Bros. isn’t answering.
The one genuinely encouraging note in Ruimy’s report: the film has reportedly been testing better in recent months than it did in its rough first round last year.
The tracking problem
Deadline put Supergirl on three-week tracking at $55 million and up for its domestic opening. Superman opened to $125 million last summer on its way to $618.7 million worldwide. The follow-up is tracking at less than half the franchise launch.
Box Office Theory’s range runs $47 million to $65 million. Against a reported budget around $170-175 million, the break-even estimates floating around run from $315 million worldwide on the low end to the roughly $425 million figure Puck reported Warner Bros. considers “good enough.”
A $55 million start makes either number a climb, and the comparison fans keep reaching for is The Flash, which opened to the same $55 million in 2023 and then fell off a cliff.
The presale signals genuinely conflict. Cosmic Book News reported first-day ticket sales of 110,000, trailing Superman, Black Widow, and Thunderbolts at the same point. Other tracking coverage says presales are pacing roughly two and a half times ahead of The Marvels and that projections could drift up toward $60-77 million.
Deadline’s data has one clear bright spot: unaided awareness is higher than Thunderbolts and The Mandalorian and Grogu managed, and it’s spread evenly across men and women, young and old.
The calendar isn’t doing Milly Alcock any favors either. Toy Story 5 opens the week before, with more family-audience tentpoles stacked right behind.
So that’s the picture two weeks out: a heavily reworked movie, a lean cut, mixed presale tea leaves, and a tracking number that would have been a five-alarm fire in the Snyder era. The counterpoint is that short isn’t bad (Deadpool ran 108 minutes), late recuts sometimes save movies, and tracking has been wrong before in both directions.
June 26 settles it. Kara gets one weekend to prove the surgery worked.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.
Hat Tips:
Irish Film Classification Office via JoBlo (June 2026), verified for the official 107-minute, 55-second runtime
Deadline (June 2026), verified for the $55M+ three-week tracking, awareness data, and competitive calendar
World of Reel (June 11, 2026), Jordan Ruimy’s report, attributed for the test-screening count, three endings, the January runtime, and improved recent testing
Warner Bros. press materials via CBR and Dark Horizons (March 2026), verified for the Djawadi-to-Holkenborg-to-Sarne composer timeline
Cosmic Book News (June 2026), attributed for the first-day presale figures, the Puck break-even reporting, and The Flash comparison