Superman is set to break a box office record by the end of its first weekend in theaters. The new superhero movie was written and directed by James Gunn and stars David Corenswet as Superman opposite Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor.
In addition to being the latest feature film bringing the DC superhero to the big screen after previous adaptations starring Christopher Reeve, Brandon Routh, and Henry Cavill, 2025's Superman is the first installment in the DC Universe, the soft reboot of the DC Extended Universe which is being overseen by Gunn and his DC Studios co-chairman and co-CEO Peter Safran.
Per Deadline, as of Saturday morning, Superman is projected to close out its opening weekend at the domestic box office with a 3-day total of $123 million. This will mark the third best domestic debut of 2025 so far, behind only Lilo & Stitch ($146 million) and A Minecraft Movie ($162.7 million).
Additionally, that total will make Superman the 11th highest-grossing domestic movie of 2025 within the first three days of its run alone. That debut is much more than enough for the James Gunn movie to knock Jurassic World Rebirth from its perch on top of the domestic chart.
The standalone dinosaur sequel, which stars Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey, has fallen to No. 2 during its sophomore weekend with a week-on-week drop of 57%. Below, see the full domestic Top 5 chart for the weekend:
# | Title | 3-Day Total | Cumulative (Domestic) |
|---|---|---|---|
With Superman naturally rising to the top, the remaining summer movies on the chart have all moved down one spot apiece, knocking the horror sequel 28 Years Later from No. 5 to No. 6 with a 3-day gross of $2.72 million seeing it drop 40% in its fourth weekend.
In addition to Jurassic World ceding its position at No. 1, F1 The Movie slipped to No. 3 with a 50% drop, How to Train Your Dragon fell an outstandingly slim 39% to hit No. 4, and Elio has dropped to No. 5 with an even narrower 32%.
While the Pixar movie is maintaining slow and steady growth, it is still nowhere near making back its huge reported budget of $150 million.
What This Means For Superman
It's On Track To Be A Solid Success
The 2025 installment is set to earn one of the best opening weekends of the franchise. Of the previous Superman movies, only 2016's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice performed better, with a staggering debut weekend of $166 million.
The new movie is performing slightly above the level of the DCEU kickoff movie Man of Steel, which debuted with $116.6 million on its way to becoming the ninth highest-grossing movie of 2013 worldwide. Below, see a breakdown of the box office performance of the previous theatrical features in which Superman is a title character:
Title | Domestic Debut | Worldwide Box Office |
|---|---|---|
If Superman follows the trajectory of its immediate predecessors, it could eventually earn between $650 and $705 million worldwide. However, there is potential for the movie to perform even better, because its A- CinemaScore shows that it could become a major word-of-mouth hit. While Man of Steel also earned a score of A-, BvS only earned a B.
This range would place the movie in a solid position, because the reported budget of Superman is $225 million. While its exact break-even point is unknown, movies often have to earn back two and a half times their budgets in order to turn a profit in theaters, which could place the 2025 movie's estimated break-even point somewhere around $562.5 million.
Our Take On The Weekend Box Office
Summer's Superhero Movies Look More Promising
Ahead of this weekend, 2025's superhero movies have been underperforming. The Marvel Cinematic Universe entries Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts* have both grossed more than $375 million worldwide, earning places in the 2025 Top 10, but it doesn't seem likely that either has turned a profit against their reported $180 million budgets while in theaters.
Superman seems set to turn that trend around. Additionally, Box Office Theory projects that Marvel's upcoming The Fantastic Four: First Steps will debut between $125 and $155 million. Therefore, across the board, superhero movies are set to perform better throughout the summer, helping the genre recover as DC aims to reinvent itself and Marvel preps for another huge Avengers crossover.
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