Supergirl Opened to $18 Million on Friday and Lost Its Opening Weekend to Toy Story 5

The official money is on the board, and it is better than the worst the trackers floated and still a long way from what Warner Bros. wanted. Supergirl opened to $18 million on Friday, second place, in 3,602 theaters. That figure includes a confirmed $7.8 million in previews. Through Sunday the film should land around $50 million, according to Variety. The previews held, the weekend came in at the top of a range that had slid as low as $40 million, and the ceiling did not move at all.

When this story first posted, all anyone had were Thursday preview estimates and a tracking number drifting toward $40 million. The real receipts pushed the picture in two directions at once. Kara Zor-El opened a little stronger than the doomers feared, and still opened to less than a third of what Superman did in the same slot a year ago.

What $18 million on Friday actually buys

For a tentpole built on a reported $170 million budget, an $18 million opening day is a soft start, not a faceplant. It clears the floor. It does not clear the bar Warner Bros. set for itself last summer.

The comparison the movie cannot escape is the one inside its own universe. James Gunn's Superman cost $225 million, opened to $125 million, and finished its run at $618 million worldwide. Supergirl is opening to roughly the change Clark left in the couch cushions. The studio has reportedly spent recent weeks quietly lowering the number it will call a win, which tells you how the room reads it.

It lost its own opening weekend, exactly as the tracking warned

The one thing the forecasts nailed: Supergirl is not the number one movie in the country during its own debut. That spot belongs, again, to Toy Story 5. Pixar's sequel made $21 million on Friday in its second weekend, is headed for $70 million to $80 million by Sunday, and will cross $300 million domestic this frame. It opened to $160 million last weekend, the biggest debut of 2026. Supergirl flew into a buzzsaw, and the buzzsaw is a Pixar toy.

Behind them, the rest of the newcomers stayed small. Jackass: Best and Last took fourth with $3.8 million on Friday and about $8.5 million for the weekend, the lowest opening in the franchise, though on a $10 million budget that hardly matters. Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day and the micro-budget horror hit Obsession rounded out the top five.

The reviews and the receipts came in soft together

The soft tracking and the soft reviews showed up at the same time, and they feed each other. Supergirl sits around 58% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes with a 77% audience score, both well under Superman's 83 and 90 a year ago.

The one thing nearly every critic agrees on is Milly Alcock. Everything around her is up for debate.

The shining light is Milly Alcock. She's excellent, managing to turn the familiar themes of grief and belonging into something affecting and endearing. — Ian Sandwell, Digital Spy

The writing is the recurring complaint. Owen Gleiberman's line in Variety is the one that will follow the movie around: Gunn wanted to take the genre back to "well-structured screenwriting basics," and then delivered "a comic-book movie with the worst script I can remember." David Rooney at The Hollywood Reporter went after the spectacle, calling the action "mostly generic." The villain, Krem of the Yellow Hills, played by Matthias Schoenaerts, took repeated hits for being forgettable. Jason Momoa's Lobo is the part reviewers wanted more of.

Craig Gillespie directs from a script by Ana Nogueira, adapting Tom King and Bilquis Evely's 2022 comic Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, the book that sends Kara off Earth on a revenge run across a scavenger-planet galaxy. Put the two camps of reviews together and they are not really fighting. Supergirl reads like a movie with a strong lead, a real visual identity, and a screenplay that never hands either one enough to do.

What it means for Gunn's DC

This is the second piece of the rebuilt DC Universe to reach theaters after Superman set a high bar. Clayface arrives in October, and Gunn himself directs Man of Tomorrow in 2027. A 58% and a roughly $50 million opening will not sink the project. It does put real weight on the next two films to prove Superman was the plan and not the exception. The good news for DC is sitting inside the same reviews dragging the movie down. They found a Supergirl worth keeping. They want a better movie built around her, and the box office just told them to hurry.

Supergirl is in theaters now. Final weekend estimates land Sunday afternoon.