On the menu today: It’s a summer Friday, and this week’s newsletters have already looked at the non-political challenges facing the data center construction boom, new U.S. Senator Darline Graham, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani admitting he can’t arrest Bibi Netanyahu, and the growing drone threat to the world’s key straits and waterways. It’s time to lighten up and look at the summer movie season, and unlike everyone else at National Review, I’m not writing about The Odyssey! No, this morning we’ll examine why “superhero fatigue” is, at most, a highly selective phenomenon, and why we will keep seeing Marvel and DC superheroes at the local multiplex for a long while, even after some of these movies are said to have flopped. Read on.
The Economics of Superhero Movies
My friend Christian Toto, who covers Hollywood, noticed two major pieces of counterevidence to the recent talk about “superhero fatigue,” which was sometimes cited as a reason why the DC movie Supergirl flopped so badly. (Just one month after that film debuted in theaters, it will be available for streaming starting July 28.)
Christian observes:
The box office predictions for “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” out July 31, are off the charts. Think well north of $200 million in its debut frame. It could soar as high as $250 million.
Interest in the film’s trailer alone broke records. . . .
The official Marvel trailer for “Avengers: Doomsday” snagged 43 million views in just two days.
Plus, that first day of ticket availability went better than most people expected. The film sold $16.5 million in tickets, a hefty sum considering the buyers have to wait roughly five months to see the film.
In other words, for an era of superhero movie fatigue, there sure seems to be a lot of anticipation for two of Marvel Studios’ biggest upcoming releases. And while lots of people watching the trailer online for free isn’t a guarantee that these people will buy tickets . . . it certainly is a better sign than low interest in a film’s trailer.
Supergirl flopped for a bunch of reasons, as I mentioned on X last weekend — and yes, I’d put the perception of its “wokeness” somewhere in the middle of that list. But most notably, Supergirl as a character just doesn’t have the preexisting fanbase that characters like Superman, Batman, or Spiderman do.
(Sound of comic book geeks reaching for their Mjolnir hammers and Green Lantern rings* to dispute this point.)
I didn’t say the character of Supergirl didn’t have any fans; besides her long comic book run, she was featured in the cheesy 1984 movie and the CW television series that ran from 2015 to 2021. And we’ve seen in the past decade or so that a lesser-known hero like Doctor Strange or Aquaman or group of heroes like the Guardians of the Galaxy can attract a major audience in movie theaters. But the character herself was not enough to get lots and lots of people to say, “I’ll be there, opening weekend, no matter what.”
Peter Safran, co-CEO of DC Studios alongside James Gunn, said earlier this year, “I never felt that there was superhero fatigue. I felt it was mediocre movie fatigue.” (Some may find that comment a little ironic, since Supergirl probably topped out at mediocre.)
I do think “superhero fatigue” has manifested in the end of the era where a fairly obscure comic book character could generate a huge surprise hit. I liked last year’s Thunderbolts from Marvel, but it made $382 million worldwide, which by Marvel standards is a flop. I also thought last summer’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps was pretty good, and it made $521 million worldwide — a grand sum for most movies, but a tepid response when you note that nine Marvel movies have made more than a billion dollars and the last two Avengers movies made more than $2 billion each. (Let’s also note that with the rate of inflation, reaching $500 million or a billion dollars in box office revenue should be getting easier for films, not more difficult.)
Last year’s most financially successful superhero movie at the box office was Superman, grossing $618 million worldwide. The previous year, it was Deadpool & Wolverine, grossing $1.3 billion. Audiences are likely to keep showing up in droves for the big-name characters — Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Wolverine. But if you’ve got a fairly obscure character, making a movie about that character is a much higher-risk proposition. This Halloween, DC will debut the Batman villain Clayface in his own horror-movie-style film, with a modest budget estimated at $40 million.
This is probably bad news if you’re hoping to someday see a Jason Momoa Lobo spinoff, or a Nathan Fillion Guy Gardner movie in the world of DC. (Yes, I know Guy will appear in the HBO series Lanterns.) To be a hit, a superhero movie probably needs a top-tier character with a preexisting fanbase, to feel like a major “event” film like an Avengers movie, a very limited production budget, or all of the above.
Why Superhero Movies Make More Money Than the Box Office Figures Suggest
When I watch YouTube and podcast movie guys talking about movies, I often hear them do some back-of-the-envelope math and state that a film must make two and a half times its budget to make a profit. Some say it’s as high as four times its production budget.
The production budget does not include advertising, which can sometimes be the equivalent of the production budget. What also often gets overlooked is that the studio only receives a portion of ticket sales; very generally speaking, studios keep only about 50 percent of domestic ticket sales and 25 percent to 40 percent of international ticket sales.
Movies also make money when a streaming service purchases the rights to feature them, as well as video-on-demand and Blue Ray/DVD sales, although those are much smaller sources of revenue than they used to be. (There are occasional signs of resurgent interest in owning physical media.) For most movies, the revenue from video-on-demand is modest, but some big movies have a significant “second life” this way: Jurassic World: Dominion made $66 million, Super Mario Brothers made $75 million, and Wicked made $100 million. And note, “An important feature of the VOD model is that studios keep 70 percent of rental sales, as opposed to the typical 50/50 split for theatrical box office.”
The YouTube guys’ back-of-the-envelope math is true enough as far as it goes, but superhero films get declared flops a little too easily these days, because most people miss at least three important revenue streams that help make a big-budget superhero film worthwhile for a film studio.
First, people have joked about too-obvious product placements in movies for a long time, but there’s a reason companies and film studios are happy to make these deals, as Zachary Crockett laid out at The Hustle earlier this year:
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Harley-Davidson paid $10 million to get its electric motorcycle featured in Marvel’s Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015).
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Heineken shelled out an estimated $45 million for seven seconds of screen time in the James Bond film Skyfall (2012).
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BMW plunked down ~$110 million to supply cars for GoldenEye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and The World is Not Enough (1999) before Aston Martin outbid them with a ~$140 million offer for Die Another Day (2002).
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More than 100 brands (including Gillette, Nokia, and Carl’s Junior) offered a combined $160 million to be featured in Man of Steel (2013).
(Note that not every product that appears in a movie involves a massive amount of cash; Hershey did not pay to have Reese’s Pieces featured in E.T.)
Revenue from product placement isn’t counted in ticket sale revenue, because it’s paid before the movie even hits theaters. But it’s a way that a portion of the production costs get offset before any tickets get sold.
Second, big-budget superhero movies often get cross-promotional events with other companies, like the official Krispy Kreme Superman doughnut. Other companies are paying the film studio to be the tie-in product for the movie. And 2025’s Superman movie went bonkers with the number of tie-ins with other companies:
The brand partnership strategy has been comprehensive and strategic. Some collaborations include partnerships with Samsung, Krispy Kreme, Progressive, Reebok, Mattel, NBA, TNT Sports, Milkbone, Fortnite, Timex, and JBL. These partnerships extend the Superman brand into everyday consumer experiences, from technology and food to sports and gaming.
Creative activations have included jersey drops with EC Bahia and Daily Planet pop-ups in various cities. Reality television shows like Love Island featured a Superman-themed challenge, with James Gunn personally announcing it on ITV+ social media.
You might be asking why other companies would pay money to have a connection to Superman for a few months. Well, at least according to Variety, “Last year, there were 200,000 Milk-Bone Superman boxes which sold out in 24 hours. How’s that? They featured a limited run comic-book on the box, Superman: A Friendship Unleashed No. 1 by Ivan Cohen with art by Travis Mercer.”
Now, studios are very tight-lipped about how much they make through these tie-in cross promotions. But every dollar coming in helps offset those production costs. And if you measure by “media value” — explained below — you’re talking about a nine-figure sum:
When Supergirl takes to the screen this Friday, she’ll be the biggest Warner Bros/DC Studios movie ever when it comes to promotional partnerships with 80+ sponsors who are delivering $100 million-plus in media value. That’s not even counting consumer products. . . .
Know that when it comes to partnerships, that dollar amount is comprised of purchased advertisements, retail store space as well as campaign digital and linear impressions. Of those 80, 65 are international partners, 14 are North American with four counting a global reach (Samsung, OPI, American Airlines and Timex).
Now, all those promotional partnerships didn’t really help put butts in seats while Supergirl was in theaters. But a studio would much rather make a movie that will come with “$100 million-plus in media value” than one that doesn’t come with that attached.
The third factor is merchandise revenue. Mel Brooks was not entirely joking when, as “Yogurt” in Spaceballs, he declared, “Merchandizing! Where the real money from the movies is made!”
Lego’s 2022 annual report to shareholders stated the company paid 5,484 million Danish kroner, equal to roughly $790 million, for the rights to make all those Star Wars and superhero and Harry Potter brick sets. That year, Lego made 64.6 billion Danish kroner, or approximately $9.83 billion. I was originally going to write that the merchandising factor is almost unique to superhero films, Star Wars, and a few other kid-focused movies, but Universal Pictures had about 300 licensed products for Wicked.
This is another one where studios and toymakers don’t release their sales numbers, but in February 2025, Mattel bought back the rights to make toys based on DC comics and movie characters from McFarlane Toys. So, toymakers clearly see superhero action figures and other toys as a money-maker.
None of this is to argue that A) that movie you didn’t like was better than it was or B) that movie that was widely perceived as a flop didn’t disappoint in its performance at the box office. The revenue from product placement, cross-promotion, and merchandise sales probably is not enough to turn a perceived flop into a giant hit. But it does help explain why these movies that seem like huge money losers aren’t such big losers, and why Warner Brothers/DC and Disney/Marvel keep making these movies. They’re making a lot of people money in ways that aren’t seen in the official box office numbers.
*Ha-ha! Could you imagine the kind of weirdo who dresses up like a comic book character?
ADDENDUM: Oh, Minnesota Republicans. How can you be so wise in your Senate primary and so foolish in your gubernatorial primary?