James Gunn’s Superman film isn’t quite enjoying its US success elsewhere in the world – and Gunn has some thoughts on why.
Warner Bros has been enjoying a good few months at the box office, off the back of successes such as Sinners, A Minecraft Movie and Final Destination Bloodlines. However, it was being reported earlier in the year that the eyes were firmly on writer-director James Gunn’s Superman. It’s been a well-received film, and the US box office returns have been strong. Posh coffees all round in California.
Outside of the US, the story that keeps coming back is that Superman hasn’t quite replicated that success outside of America though.
The facts slightly bear this out. The current US take of the film is $236m, but Superman is hardly struggling outside of America, with $173m in the bank. Sinners had a similar pattern. Warner Bros in an ideal world would have the non-US take at least in line with the American gross, but Superman is still sitting on $409m worldwide, and to most people’s eyes, has successfully relaunched DC movies.
By way of comparison, the last Superman standalone movie, Man Of Steel from 2013, earned 56.6% of its cinema take outside of the US, and going further back, Superman Returns in 2006 earned 48.8% of its box office outside of America. Superman has never gone full Marvel in terms of its worldwide split.
Still, James Gunn has been ruminating on this in a fresh interview with Rolling Stone, in which he argues that “he is not a big known superhero in some places like Batman is. That affects things. And it also affects things that we have a certain amount of anti-American sentiment around the world right now. It isn’t really helping us.”
The elephant in the room there being the current resident of the White House, convicted felon Donald Trump, who isn’t doing an awful lot to bring America and the world together. Whether that plays into whether people want to go and see a Superman movie though is unclear.
Superman is still playing, and Supergirl is following next year. Expect this debate to continue for some time to come…
