KB News DeskDC’s latest opened two days ahead of North America and promptly nosedived, echoing wider slide of a genre that no longer packs theaters here
Superman’s high-flying cousin is coming up short of expectations on both sides of the Pacific, and it’s not even close.
“Supergirl,” the second film in James Gunn and Peter Safran’s rebuilt DC Universe, opened in Korea on June 24, two days ahead of its North American debut.
In terms of competition, there wasn’t much standing in its way. Other than Disney and Pixar’s “Toy Story 5,” which was cruising at No. 1 a week into its run with close to half of all ticket sales, the chart was mostly weeks-old holdovers, led by Yeon Sang-ho’s zombie thriller “Colony.”
The only fresh face “Supergirl” went up against was “The Eyes,” a modest homegrown thriller starring Shin Min-a that opened the same day.
None of that helped. The superhero feature debuted at No. 2 on its first day with 34,939 admissions, then dropped to fourth as daily attendance cratered into the 14,000 range. It slid to fifth by the third day, slipping behind local comedy “Wild Sing,” which has been out since June 3, according to the Korean Film Council’s tracking service.
As of Tuesday, its running total stood at 124,204 tickets sold here, an embarrassing figure for a major studio blockbuster.
The numbers mirror what is shaping up to be an outright bomb worldwide. “Supergirl” debuted to $37.1 million in North America and $62.6 million globally, well short of the $50 million to $55 million domestic start the studio had been eyeing.
It’s a stunning blow to Warner Bros., which spent $170 million to make the film and roughly $120 million more to market it. Analysts project it could lose the studio somewhere between $85 million and $125 million over its theatrical run.
Much of the damage, by most accounts, was self-inflicted. The film sits at 54 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and earned a B- on CinemaScore. The complaints have been much the same everywhere: a thin, familiar revenge plot that does little to win anyone over.
Korean viewers haven’t been any kinder, handing it a mediocre 2.7 out of 5 on local aggregator Watcha.
The bigger picture is that Hollywood’s costumed heroes have lately been falling out of favor with audiences all across the globe. Before the pandemic, superhero pictures were as close to a sure thing as the box office offered, led by Marvel Studios’ unbroken run of hits.
Korea was one of the studio’s most devoted markets — so much so that “Avengers: Endgame” (2019) sold 13.9 million tickets to become the top-grossing foreign release in the country’s history. Earlier series entries “Infinity War” (2018, 11.2 million) and “Age of Ultron” (2015, 10.5 million) had already cleared the 10 million mark that defines a megahit here.
DC, to be fair, never enjoyed that kind of following in Korea even at the height of the boom. Its old DC Extended Universe — since replaced by Gunn and Safran’s DCU — fell well short of Marvel’s numbers.
With the exception of “Aquaman” (2018), which drew over 5 million admissions in Korea and remains the franchise’s top earner at $1.15 billion globally, nothing really broke through. “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” (2.26 million) and “Wonder Woman” (2.17 million) were the only other titles to clear 2 million, and no DC film has cracked even 1 million here since 2019.
Fatigue set in after the pandemic, as years of mediocre sequels and spinoffs wore audiences down. The slump was more or less universal, but more keenly felt in Korea, where theater attendance has been unusually slow to climb back to prepandemic levels.
Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*” (2025) managed 922,000 admissions, “The Marvels” (2023) just 690,000 and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” (2025) a mere 590,000, well down from the days when the studio routinely filled cinemas for weeks here.
DC’s troubles run deeper still. Without the loyal base Marvel built hit by hit, or the deep-rooted recognition its characters have long enjoyed in the US, the gap between how its films play at home and how they play here has been especially stark.
Last year’s “Superman” was a case in point. James Gunn’s reboot was a genuine hit in North America, opening above $100 million — the first DC film to do so since “Wonder Woman” in 2017 — and it was widely hailed as a revival of the studio.
In Korea, it greatly underperformed, closing out its run at 864,238 admissions, short of the 1 million mark and the weakest showing of any recent Superman reboot, even behind 2013’s “Man of Steel” (2.18 million) and 2016’s “Batman v Superman” (2.26 million).
The real test comes later this year, when two heavyweights arrive to show whether the problem is the genre or the movies themselves.
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” a follow-up to 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” lands first. That earlier film grossed nearly $2 billion worldwide and drew 7.55 million admissions in Korea even in the thick of the pandemic.
Then comes “Avengers: Doomsday,” which sees the return of Robert Downey Jr. to the franchise as the villain Doctor Doom. His “Iron Man” helped launch a run that became a phenomenon here; if superhero movies still have a pulse in Korea, this might be the one to show it.
