Superman Leads Blockbuster Summer Box Office Weekend

The latest Superman action hero film is scoring big sales at the box office. (Photo by Craig T Fruchtman/Getty Images)

James Gunn’s Superman was the undisputed star of another breakout summer movie weekend, selling $122 million in tickets during a weekend expected to generate nearly $200 million in domestic box office sales.

The Warner Bros. superhero movie managed to both win over audiences and dodge criticism from conservative commentators who called the film “woke” because Gunn called the alien from Krypton “an immigrant.”

Superman opened on 4,135 screens and sold an average of $29,504 a theater through Sunday, according to Comscore. The film grossed another $95 million in 78 international markets, including $6.6 million in China, for an estimated $217 million global weekend.

Data from the 7.7 million people who saw the film in its first three days showed that moviegoers from both red and blue counties “are ignoring any political narratives from the right or left,” said Steve Buck, chief strategy officer of EntTelligence.

Written and directed by Gunn and starring David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Hoult, this retelling features a Superman who must reconcile his alien Kryptonian heritage with his moral human upbringing in the midst of an international conflict.

“In his signature style, James Gunn takes on the original superhero in the newly imagined DC universe with a singular blend of epic action, humor and heart, delivering a Superman who’s driven by compassion and an inherent belief in the goodness of humankind,” Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian said.

The combination of highly competitive movie offerings and the relentless onslaught of new releases over the past 10 weeks has helped summer ticket sales surpass last year’s totals by 16.5% so far, Dergarabedian said. This weekend’s ticket sales, for example, are expected to be 26.1% higher than the Fourth of July weekend totals. Total domestic ticket sales of $4.7 billion so far this year are 15% higher than they were at this point in 2024.

“The overperformance of [last weekend’s] Jurassic World Rebirth likely helped the box office outcome for Superman, given the massive exposure to the brilliant trailer and solid in-theater marketing that Warner Bros. orchestrated, not to mention their ubiquitous online and social media presence that made the latest epic from DC Comics a must-see moviegoing event this weekend,” he added.

Superman is the first release from Warner Bros.’ new DC Studios unit, led by director and screenwriter James Gunn and producer Peter Safran. The movie was filmed in Cleveland, the hometown of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the high schoolers who created Superman in 1938. The city is erecting an 18-foot steel statue of Superman in their honor next month.

Superman is the third movie this year to open with more than $100 million in domestic box office sales over its three-day debut. Warner Bros.’ A Minecraft Movie, which opened April 4, sold $162,753,003 its opening weekend, and Walt Disney’s Lilo & Stitch, which opened May 23, sold $146,016,175 its first weekend. Both PG-rated family films have gone on to rake in hundreds of millions more in global ticket sales: A Minecraft Movie has sold $955.2 million globally, while Lilo & Stitch’s year-to-date global total is $994.3 million.

Comcast’s Universal Pictures’ dinosaur thriller Jurassic World Rebirth scared up another $40 million in ticket sales to take second place in its second weekend, and has sold more than $232.1 million domestically and $529.5 million globally.

Warner Bros. and Apple Original Films’ FI The Movie raced to third place with $13 million in domestic ticket sales, $136.2 million in domestic cumulative sales, and $393.4 million globally since it opened June 27.

Universal’s DreamWorks Animation’s How To Train Your Dragon sold another $7.8 million to take fourth place, bringing its domestic sales to $239.8 million and its global total to $560.8 million.

Films opening July 18 include Paramount’s animated Smurfs, starring Rihanna as Smurfette; Sony Pictures’ horror flick I Know What You Did Last Summer; and A24’s western drama Eddington. Disney’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps opens July 25.

Write to Janet H. Cho at janet.cho@dowjones.com