Supergirl’s Budget & How Much It Needs To Make At The Box Office Explained

DC Studios co-heads James Gunn and Peter Safran, along with the brass at Warner Bros., are continuing to expand the scope of the DC Universe. The latest entry in the universe is “Supergirl,” which stars Milly Alcock (“House of the Dragon”) as Superman’s Kryptonian cousin, Kara Zor-El. Last year, “Superman” became the biggest comic book movie of 2025 at the box office. But how will his cousin fare? That remains to be seen, but the bar for success is still pretty high.

As of this writing, “Supergirl” is only just now making its way to theaters, so we can’t analyze what it has (or hasn’t) made yet. That said, early projections suggest that “Supergirl” may not fly very high at the box office, with DC’s latest expected to open in the $50 million range domestically. What we can do, though, is look at what the movie cost to produce and what it would need to make in order to be considered a financial success. We can also look at what’s been said in terms of what the studio would evidently be happy with.

Director Craig Gillespie’s take on the Girl of Steel carries a reported $170 million budget, which doesn’t account for marketing costs. That’s a little less than “Superman,” which cost north of $200 million. The very rough rule-of-thumb that is often followed is that a movie needs to make 2.5 times its budget to be considered successful. In this case, that would put the number at $425 million globally.

In terms of how the box office actually works, generally speaking, theaters keep around half of the money from ticket sales. Marketing a blockbuster isn’t cheap. Even if WB was wildly thrifty and that number is under $100 million, its total investment would still be at least $250 million.

If Warner Bros.’ investment in “Supergirl” is around $250 million including marketing, as a rough hypothetical, it would need to make $500 million worldwide to break even. According to The Wrap, “Insiders at the studio say that anything above $300 million worldwide will be seen as a win.”

$300 million at the box office wouldn’t allow “Supergirl” to profit on its own. Things could eventually change after VOD, streaming, DVD, etc., is factored in, but studios don’t make $170 million superhero movies just to break even. They make them to hopefully earn lots of money. It doesn’t help that “Supergirl” currently only holds a 56% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes.

“Superman” soared at the box office with a $125 million domestic opening, going on to make $618 million worldwide. The fact that “Supergirl” is tracking to make less than half of that movie’s opening weekend figure isn’t great. If it does indeed open in the $50 million range, the comparisons within the superhero genre get rough in a hurry.

“The Flash” (a disaster of super-heroic proportions) opened to $55 million en route to just $271 million worldwide. Meanwhile, “Black Adam,” which didn’t get a sequel and was widely viewed as a huge disappointment, debuted to $67 million and failed to crack $400 million globally. If things go really bad? We could be looking at something closer to “The Marvels,” which bowed to merely $46 million en route to $206 million worldwide (a box office low for the Marvel Cinematic Universe).

We’ll see where the chips fall, but dispassionately looking at the numbers suggests that this movie is going to need a lot of help to break even.

“Supergirl” opens in theaters tonight.