Disclosure Day, Supergirl, and when films are said to be losing money

by Simon Brew |
Disclosure Day and Supergirl
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Box office reporting suggests difficulties for both Disclosure Day and Supergirl. A few thoughts on whether this actually matters. The cycle is wearily familiar. When a biggish-to-big film roles around, coverage (and I’ve been as guilty of this as anyone) goes from is the trailer any good/too spoilery, to box office projections, to (usually ecstatic) ... Disclosure Day, Supergirl, and when films are said to be losing money

Box office reporting suggests difficulties for both Disclosure Day and Supergirl. A few thoughts on whether this actually matters.

The cycle is wearily familiar.

When a biggish-to-big film roles around, coverage (and I’ve been as guilty of this as anyone) goes from is the trailer any good/too spoilery, to box office projections, to (usually ecstatic) early reactions, to (less ecstatic) actual reviews, to analysing the box office returns and offering an immediate diagnosis.

In the space of weeks, a movie’s fate is sealed. The Rotten Tomatoes score is terrible, film must be awful! The movie’s not made as much money as expected, it’s a disaster! And so on, and so on.

The two latest candidates, not least where box office analysis is concerned? Steven Spielberg’s admired return to summer sci-fi with Disclosure Day, and the latest entry in the DC universe, Supergirl.

The current state of play with box films. Disclosure Day has endured a “dismal box-office drop” and is requiring some $300m at the global box office to turn a profit for Universal. At the point this is being written, the film’s global box office sits at $195m. It probably won’t get to $300m, and there’s a conversation certainly about why that matters for summer blockbusters.

But let’s bring in Supergirl.

Over at World Of Reel, they’re now diagnosing it as “one of the biggest box office bombs of the century.” The film cost around $185m before marketing and distribution costs, and its own global take will just about to get that number, but not more beyond. That’ll be red ink on the Warner Bros balance sheet.


There’s a degree of spectator sport in this of course, and as per the above news report, it’s writing that “the sheer magnitude of this debacle will be talked about for years to come, and could have lasting consequences for DC Studios.”

For anyone who cares about movies, as much as we’d rather not, it’s almost inevitable that we keep an awareness of box office. The primary reason is because that affects what’s going to be greenlit in future, and what kind of films are coming our way over the years ahead of us. Disclosure Day, a standalone original science fiction film, not tied to any pre-existing intellectual property, was always a gamble.

But it’s slightly more nuanced than that.

Universal marketed the film well, and the studio was rewarded with a better-than-expected box office opening. However, the word of mouth hasn’t stacked up, and in came the competition of Toy Story 5. The second weekend takings thus drop notably, and the grumpy ink comes out.

In the case of Supergirl, I admired how DC Studios co-boss came straight out after the opening weekend and admitted that the numbers “didn’t meet our box office expectations.” In a comment to the New York Times, he also added that “it’s just one component of a broader, long-term strategy at DC Studios that we remain confident in.”

Again, the nuance has been lost there in some of the reporting around the film. With the coverage of a superhero universe around it, Supergirl will of course continue making money for a long time to come. 1984’s Supergirl, starring Helen Slater, was widely derided on release, yet Warner Bros continues to sell the film.

Go back to something like The Flash, itself a summer DC movie with disappointing box office returns, it’s become popular on streaming, sells discs, and hasn’t stopped earning just because reporting has now found fresh targets.


As for Disclosure Day, I turn around in the room I’m writing this in, and see a collection of Steven Spielberg movies on my shelf. Films such as 1941, Hook, Always and The Terminal sit on there, movies that were each regarded as disappointments and/or box office failures in their time. The Spielberg name ensures that Disclosure Day will always continue to find an audience and over time, inevitably, will turn a profit. Even if studio accounting won’t necessarily tell the story that way.

My points are these.

Firstly, the rush to put an absolute judgement on a film inside three months is patently daft. It’s good for clicks, certainly, and in the AI era, lord knows we all need them. But also, movie history is awash with films that only found their audience over a long period of time. Or films where the money dripped in over years, even decades. Neither Universal nor Warner Bros will be out of pocket on either film by the time anything close to a final total is tallied up.

Secondly, as an audience member, there’s not an awful lot I can do.

I’ve gone to the cinema, and supported both films. I paid my money, and I like one more than the other. But I confess I’ve long since put to the back of my mind whether the two multi-billion-dollar conglomerates involved will see a return on their investment. I can’t see the heads of either Universal or Warner Bros surrounding their yachts, their private jets, and/or their luxury homes in the Hollywood hills over these films.

Over time, some films hit, some films don’t.

The people at the top seem to get richer either way, and the people at the bottom screwed over. It’s not a system I particularly like, and I think that intrinsically analysing box office returns reduces a movie. In much the same way quoting its Rotten Tomatoes score as an absolute seems short term at best, nonsense at worse.

I cite quite a lot the comment that filmmaker Kevin Smith once made about box office. As always I’m badly paraphrasing him, but he contended at least once that the audience shouldn’t worry in the slightest about box office. We’re not paying for the movies. We don’t have to do the end of year accounts. We choose what to spend out money on, and so be it.

We don’t need statistics for how many bottles of our favourite drink have been sold. We don’t need a chart for ticket sales at a local theatre. We manage to get by without learning the financial returns of an assortment of businesses involved in products that we like.

And we don’t need to worry that Warner Bros Discovery will be having some extra board meetings after the Supergirl movie failed to hit financial expectations. Warner Bros Discovery will be fine. It had lots of hit movies last year, and it’s got lots of hit movies ahead of it (and is being bought for zillions of dollars). Steven Spielberg will also be fine. He’s apparently worth around a billion, and there won’t be a shortage of people wanting to make his next film either.

And, let’s face it, in three months’ time, the news cycle will have moved on anyway, in search of a fresh target. I look forward to running this same article next year, just with some different names on it. See you back here in 12 months…

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