The box office must have a red sun, because Supergirl is proving to be powerless.

2026’s Supergirl, which was directed by Craig Gillespie, is the second feature-length installment in the DC Universe, which is the soft reboot of the DC Extended Universe that kicked off its theatrical slate with 2025’s Superman. The new movie has struggled to connect with audiences, following a domestic debut that took in less than a third of Superman‘s $125 million opening weekend with the third-worst sophomore drop of all time for a movie based on superhero comics and then tying for the DC franchise’s quickest plummet from the domestic Top 5 during its third weekend.

Per Deadline, as of Saturday morning, Supergirl is projected to end its fourth weekend with a 3-day gross of $1.4 million at the domestic box office, falling 62% from its third weekend as it is pushed down from No. 8 to No. 9. Should these projections hold by the end of Sunday, Supergirl will officially earn the lowest fourth-weekend domestic take of any movie in either the DCEU or the DCU, falling slightly below the previous record-holder, which was the 2023 bomb Shazam! Fury of the Gods ($1.6 million).

Every other movie in the DC franchises had a fourth-weekend haul of $2 million or more, peaking with 2017’s Wonder Woman ($24.9 million). Below, see a breakdown of the domestic weekend 4 performance of the 10 previous lowest-grossing DCU and DCEU movies (which, incidentally, includes every single movie from the franchise released between 2019 and the premiere of Supergirl):

Because it had a bigger opening weekend than Shazam! Fury of the Gods, the new DCU movie should be able to outgross the underperforming sequel by the end of its run. In fact, it had already hit a cumulative global gross of $119.3 million by the end of its third full week, putting it on track to climb the franchise’s overall chart before long.

However, this is still a damaging result for the new Supergirl movie. Its reported break-even point is somewhere between $300 and $375 million, which is a range that none of the DC movies with a fourth weekend below $4 million were ultimately able to reach. If it falls short of that range, it could lose more than $100 million at the box office.

It ultimately remains to be seen if Supergirl‘s performance is a bad omen for the DC Universe as a whole. After all, Superman was a box office success. If its upcoming sequel Man of Tomorrow doesn’t have diminishing returns, it should help keep the franchise afloat. The franchise also has the Batman movie The Brave and the Bold in development, and the presence of one of the franchise’s marquee superheroes could help bolster its box office take.

However, alongside Supergirl, there are multiple other movies in the franchise that don’t center on the comics’ tentpole heroes, including the upcoming horror movie Clayface, which focuses on the titular Batman villain. If these movies continue to fail to perform well at the box office, it could erode the connective tissue of the entire franchise.

This could be an unfortunate development, because the intent with this type of interconnected universe is typically to use flagship titles to launch new spinoffs and subfranchises. That’s how Supergirl came to be in the first place, as the character originally appeared in Superman. However, if the DCU fails to create a robust slate of franchises, it could collapse before it even gets started.

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