Transcription
Well, the weekend is over and the numbers are in. Surprisingly, Superman wins in the US. Superman is a hit in the US. I did not expect that. I did not expect the critics to love it, the audience to love it, and for it to do well in the US.
Now, in fact, I got some numbers here. Uh, so Superman screams DC is back at the US box office. It did 56.5 million. That's the number two biggest Friday opening day of 2025. It beats Lilo and Stitch at 55.9 million. And it's only under a Minecraft movie at 57.1 million. I never thought it would beat Minecraft, but it came close. It's It's number two. And that's including the 225 million in previews. And if we compare it with James Gun's past, it's better than Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 uh uh opening day at 48.1 million. And it's almost on par with the Batman uh which is a much more popular character than Superman. Take it from me. Uh that one did uh let's see, that one did 56.6. So, pretty much on par with The Batman. Um, and it is the biggest uh OP opening day in James Gun's career. It beat Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2's 56.1 million. And it is now the 45 the 45th biggest opening day of all time. And it's the biggest Friday ever for a Superman solo film. It beat Man Steel's Friday opening at $44 million.
Now, this projection gets a little out of control. They're saying it's eyeing 130 to 140 3-day weekend. I don't think it's going to hit that. It's Sunday now, so the numbers are coming in. I think it's probably like 122, something like that. Maybe it'll get a few more walk-ins. I don't know how they do these numbers. They It's always mystifying. It's only What is it right now? It's Sunday at 300 p.m. So, uh I guess they they they figure it out via pre-sales, but that's still really really good. A huge win for Superman here domestically.
Now, this hides. So, that's all good news, but all that just hid the really, really bad news, guys. And I have to bring some people down up out of the clouds. Um because unfortunately Superman by the looks of it has flopped internationally. Uh the world just other countries they weren't having Superman. They weren't having truth justice in the American way this time. Um and there are several reasons for that. I'll go into six reasons why I think Superman has failed overseas. Uh I think you know a big one right now. We're not the most popular uh in in the in the world right now, especially in the Trump tariff era. Um there's also superhero uh fatigue definitely going on overseas. Uh there's a numerous reasons which I'll get to. Uh but we have to we have to be realistic. We have to talk about what is the actual success of the new DCU. Where does it end up in a worldwide total? Where does it end up? You know, does it make its budget back? And you have to factor all this in. Uh and so I've run the numbers. You're going to be the most well-informed Superman fans with the box office, the most well-informed DCU fans with the actual numbers and what's coming and what's in the future.
But basically, unfortunately, because International did not come through for us, we are going to miss. We're going to miss Man of Steel's uh final totals. Uh the Superman 2025 is going to do worse, unfortunately, than Man of Steel by the end. Um now, that's not the end of the world. It it feels like and and even James Gun was predicting, he was probably seeing numbers before us, um that 700 million would be ridiculous. uh he doesn't have to hit those numbers to be considered a success. Uh many people were saying that the Warner Brothers kind of adjusted their production and and their projections to being okay with a 500 million number. If it's less than 500 million, then they're going to pull the plug. If it's if it's 400 million, that's plug pull. Uh but that was never in danger, at least because uh US came out in support, critics, audiences came out and supported it. I think uh I've done the research. It's probably going to end up at 585 uh by the end of its entire run globally, both the US and internationally. And uh and so is that a success? I I think that uh it's very mid to low in the great in the start of the DCU. And unfortunately going forward with Supergirl and Clayface, I think those are going to make less than what this made. And so DC and WB better be prepared to adjust their projections. You need to lower your budgets right now. You need to adjust your projections right now. And that doesn't mean that by the end of Clayface uh that you know if if that underperforms that the DCU is over. I do think that by uh they'll get to Batman because this is WB has always been able to rely on Batman. So if we get to Batman and Batman underperforms, that's when those plugs will start to be pulled. So you have I think Batman 2 is going to artificially hold it up because that's something completely different. Matt Reeves builtin fan base there. I however I do kind of think that I feel still feeling like that might underperform. Um, but when you get to James Gun's DCU version of Batman, Batman the Brave and the Bold and then obviously World's Finest because the reason why I go into these numbers and why I care about this is I want a Superman sequel. I wanted a Man of Steel sequel and I saw them [ __ ] it up and immediately go to Batman v Superman, immediately go to Justice League, try to play catchup with Marvel. That was never going to work. but it artificially boosted their numbers because when you bring Batman in here, a proven box office success with Superman, you're going to get bigger numbers. So, I feel like they're going to repeat the same mistake. I feel like based upon the performance of Superman by the end of its run, if it is low like it is now, mid to low, then that might encourage the WB executives to be like, James, uh, world's finest right now. We need to bring in Batman. We need profit and you will not get a Superman sequel. No, we need to we need to go. Let's get to Justice League. Let's get to World's Finest. And that will suck because I I was hoping for um them to have patience with him, for him to have a Guardians of the Galaxy arc. Guardians of the Galaxy 1 did amazing 770, then Guardians of the Galaxy 3, 850 plus, and then, you know, Guardians or Guardians of the Galaxy 2, then Guardians of the Galaxy 3, 800 plus million. That's what I was hoping for Superman. to have to rehabilitate Superman, rehabilitate the image of DC and let it play out and give it time to breathe. But I don't think that's what's going to happen based upon these numbers.
Unfortunately, International did not come through for us this time. Um, so I have the numbers. Let's dive into them uh with Box Office Mojo and some predictions on DCU and how things will shake out. Uh let let's jump into the numbers. So right now the tracking is still it's just based on Friday. I think some of the Saturday and Sunday numbers need to come in for box office mojo. Other websites have those box office numbers. That's how I've been able to calculate some of this. But what's interesting is I feel like this tracking is going to hold for international and domestic. So the only numbers we're actually looking at here is international and domestic. A 41% international split is bad. It's it's not good. We needed international to be higher than domestic. And uh when you see a lot of films get carried and internationally they get sequels. Uh for example, here's Aquaman. Uh 29% domestic, 70% international. This is when you knew it was a uh you know a mega hit that will never be duplicated. The reasons why Aquaman did so well. I've done a deep dive. I went in into a rabbit hole and I figured out why. It has to do with uh the Chinese market and why was it so successful in China. That has to do with uh cultural things as well as um you know it going viral, why they really really love underwater adventures. I have some data on that. Um in fact there's a film I think called uh The Mermaid. it made 1% domestic and 99% international because it's just the look and so they really love that that in combination with it going viral in combination with James Wan in combination with Aquaman being a very huge CGI adventure. Uh so all those elements uh really uh created this this unprecedented uh box office that will probably never be repeated and doesn't really have much to do with u you know, the DC itself. Aquaman 2 didn't end up doing quite as well. Still kills it internationally which really heavily carried the film but nowhere near that that viral 1 billion back when Aquaman came out in 2018. it went viral on Chinese social media and it just became a thing to go out and see it. Um that was not the case for the sequel. Uh but you could still tell with strong international numbers you can carry an entire franchise. So right now international is really really low and this is going to be a domestic carried film which is fine but it's not going to get you that that worldwide uh you know gross. Like for example here we have F1 the movie. It is doing better internationally. it is getting more money internationally. It's doing well here at home, but it's also doing much better. And so that that can really, uh, help the theater, help it quite a bit. So, um, what I'm hoping is that this this does better than, uh, you know, it's not going to do better than Man of Steel. You know, the it's the similar the numbers are similar to Superman Returns, at least domestically versus internationally. This is, I think, where it's going to end. It might try to even out to a 50/50. That is if it goes up and it's towards the positive. We can hope that it goes to 50/50, but I don't think so. I think it'll probably still be 5545 international. Um, but what a huge strong opening uh here locally and that that helps it a lot.
So, let's just So, here I went and did the uh the deep dive numbers. Okay, I went into Man of Steel. I went to see the domestic weekends. How much did it drop off? There's a huge drop off, 64%. And this is what's going to be key for Superman going forward. How how much legs does it have? How long how big of a drop off from one weekend to the next does it make? Unfortunately, final uh or Fantastic 4 is going to come in and put a nail in it and it's going to help drag it down and cut its legs out. And so that's why I think people should be conservative on the estimates moving forward. But so what I did is I said let's I extrapolated the data. I said let's say that man let's say that Superman 2025 does about as well in terms of drop off as Man of Steel with positive word of mouth. Man of Steel had positive word of mouth. I think audiences loved it. Um here audiences and critics love it. So maybe slightly better word mouse, slightly less of a drop off, but let's use the same numbers uh that Man of Steel did. And if you come over here, this is domestic weekend. And you say, "Okay, well, how does all of these add up to to this?" No, you actually have to take in the weekly numbers because for some reason they only care about the weekend, but you get a lot more money on the week, you know, going through the entire seven days rather than just the weekend. For example, here's the opening weekend for Man of Steel 116. And then if you take the whole week, it's uh 156. So I extrapolated all this data. I did the same thing. See, I was doing just the weekends here. That's uh don't don't look at that. So this is the data extrapolated for Superman 2025 with the same amount of drop offs that were happening here in Man of Steel. And so what that is doing ultimately will take us to uh 367.7 which would just round to 367 million domestic by the end. We're talking about at the end of its theatrical run. Now granted it's going to take you know several uh weeks and months to get to the end of that but that's I think uh a safe prediction of where it'll end. 367 domestic and actually update here uh to update my international numbers. My international numbers were a little off. The domestic is still the same, but we got an updated numbers. This is happening live right now. Uh the num from the numbers.com. They say the international box office right now at the end of the weekend is 95. If I take 95 and I apply the Man of Steel uh drop off week by week, um then this is what it looks like right there. Here's I do international. I do 95. I do drop uh man of steel drop off to just about six weeks. Let's just say six. Uh because what what else are you going to get? 1 2 3 4 you know like eight more million. So uh if you do that for the international, here's your new international number. 217 minus four weeks. You could put four weeks back in there. So this is the old total. Old total wrong. This would probably be the more realistic new total is uh 585. Uh uh we'll go ahead and route it to 585 worldwide. This is updated numbers. I'm sticking this into the video as we're getting uh updated numbers here uh Sunday night. So uh on with the video.
So half a half a billion dollars to me is good especially for a Superman brand. I don't know why people think that that Superman I do understand why people think that Superman should make a billion and this and that, but the reality is is and I actually pay attention because I'm a super mega fan of Superman. He is a famous character. He's just not popular. He used to be popular way back in the day, but nowadays it's it's not like that anymore. It's Batman who's popular. Superman might be more famous. Well, at this point, I think Batman might be more famous and more popular, but that's just the reality.
So, um the major I think the the six reasons for uh Superman's flop overseas can be summed up in in six reasons, and that's it's a reboot. Okay? Uh the the first reboots of films, uh they kind of usually struggle. For example, X-Men First Class, a little struggle there. Spider-Man Homecoming, little little bit of a struggle. So, these are still making money at the box office. Uh, Amazing Spider-Man. Um, anytime you get those first ones after a reboot, it struggles a little bit and then it finds its feet in its sequel and and popularity goes up. So, I'm hoping that DC treats Superman like Guardians of the Galaxy. So, Guardians of the Galaxy did and then it went up and then it went up and we're doing well in the box office, right? But you have to give uh the film multiple sequels. You have to give the film a chance. You have to let that audience build. And too often I think WB just runs uh you know has no real confidence in Superman at all and then just runs to the easy way to make a billion which is Batman and Superman. Um, but as I was saying before, going back to the underperformance of Superman, number one, reboot. Number two, Superman's it's a little harder to sell. This is just something I know. Again, he's famous. He's not popular. Um, you look at all the previous Superman films. Now, adjusted for fl inflation. Back in the 70s, Superman really popular uh uh had done better. Um, but this is Christopher Reeve. This is the first time you've actually seen a man could fly. It was [ __ ] amazing. there was these moments and it stuck with people and and it's their childhood. Um these days I think the childhood is more Spider-Man and Batman and stuff. So um that's number two. Number three, there's no star power. There was no star power in the film. There's no recognizable big names for general audiences to go and and and collect. This is more for for um you know domestic but actually it still did well here domestically. But internationally they know uh in in world in the world they know our movie stars and it always helps to have big names and movie stars. This film didn't have any of it. But a big one a big one is the US reputation overseas right now guys. It's the worst it's been in a long time. Um you know in this uh era of Trump tariffs and and trade wars and mentalities of the Canadians hate us right now. Trump starting more [ __ ] with them. Um, you know, and and unfortunately Superman, I do think uh will get caught in that and does get caught in that. They don't really care. I don't want to see an American hero, you know. Oh, I don't want American propaganda exported and stuff. If if things were different and and you know, we were everybody's allies, everybody's friends, and then and you know, our relations were improving and sentiment is improving across the world, I do think that that would tick it up. I'm not talking about huge ticks here. I'm talking about 2 to 3% to that international number, that international 41% international. If if some of these uh we we tick here, we do if it wasn't that reboot, here's 2%. Here's Superman's hard, you know, uh the star power, another 2%. US reputation, 3%. Now we're we're pulling it up. Um and then another one, number five, is competition. F1 is doing really well overseas. Like people love this movie. Uh, no matter what country, it just gets you going. And uh same thing with Jurassic Park, a [ __ ] juggernaut. I I knew this would be an issue. I knew that Jurassic Park, while it came out before Superman, is still cutting into the ceiling of Superman. If Jurassic Park wasn't out, [ __ ] if Superman came out over July 4th weekend and there's no there's nothing no, you know, rival studios film trying to make a billion dollars, then yeah, Superman could have reached some of these crazy numbers that people were saying, "Oh, 175 million domestic." I was like, "You guys are crazy. Stop it." You know, or 1 billion domestic. I'm like, "Stop it. You don't understand how the box office works. You don't understand the Superman, you know, brand potential here, and I'm trying to tell you." And here we are. So, but I think uh you know Jurassic Park is keeping its ceiling at a certain area and then soon we're about to hit Fantastic 4, which is going to cut its legs out. That's why I'm staying uh conservative on my projections. And that's why when I even tell you 521 million worldwide, there's still a chance that it could just be 500 million worldwide depending on on uh Fantastic 4. Um and that's worrying. And then finally, just superhero fatigue in general. Um perhaps even DC fatigue. The fact that you have like like what is it? The last eight DC films have been terrible. Uh you know, it's like you have to go back to uh Batman and and and the you know, Hain Phoenix Joker one to to really get these these amazing hits um and and and Batman. But um you know, it's it's a problem. And then uh you know ill will especially in the fan base. The fan base is divided. Trust me, I'm I'm on the internet. I see the discourse and the fights back and forth. And then the rightwing right-wing woke Superman, you know, Fox News telling people people, well, I'm not going to see that film. You know, that that's a little bit doesn't do a whole lot, but it all factors in here. So, a little bit of ill will uh toward, you know, after the DCU ended. So these these are six huge reasons uh for some of the box office performance for Superman overseas. It's a surprise it's doing so well here in the US. And I wouldn't say so well, right? So so well would be 175 and all the crazy [ __ ] pro projections. Now the projections are where I thought they were. Like you heard it here first. I gave you this prediction. I gave you 120. I gave you 115. And that's where we're at because I knew it had about the same potential as Man of Steel because we're on a reboot. We're rebooting the whole thing and people are skeptical. Um, now, uh, word of mouth might increase it and that's really the only thing that we have to hold on to is that it did well with critics and audiences. It's a bit of a crowd-pleaser. May not have that ending clapping moment. I wish it did. Uh, so that people feel good leaving the theater. Um, there's still some people clapping. I went to two showings, no clapping. Um I am going to do a third showing hopefully. We'll see. We'll see there. But um it it's it this is the uh this is what it's like and these are real projections from, you know, somebody who's honest to you all the time, even if it hurts me. Um and yeah, so yeah, so thank you so much for watching. Thank you for talking uh the DC with me, the DCU uh box office performance and Superman performance. I am seeing uh Superman again a third time uh in IMAX uh sometime soon. Um and I keep noticing new things and you know we could talk more Superman in the future and the DCU in the future. Thank you so much for watching. Tell me what you think and uh I will see you guys on the next Angry Joe Show. Bye guys. Heat. Heat.