IDK -
The Incredible Hulk BO failure didn't kill the fledgling MCU or change it's trajectory.
The Incredible Hulk underperformed at the box office, but still sold receipts in excess of its budget. It may not have become profitable until DVD/rental revenue kicked in, but it
almost certainly made money overall.
Supergirl has an estimated break-even box office figure of
$315m worldwide, which an opening weekend of $30m indicates it will almost certainly fail to meet by a very large margin, and in a time where DVD/digital sales bring in much less revenue than they used to. The former underperformed; the latter is a bomb.
The Incredible Hulk's middling reviews, however, very probably
did change its trajectory, along with Iron Man's notable success, in encouraging Marvel Studios to seek a stronger authorial voice for its big Avengers project, for which they hired not an experienced if somewhat generic action movie director, but a primary TV writer to both write and direct.
Without getting into the physical attractiveness of individual actors - so why was this film ignored?
The marketing? The character themselves? Something external? Lack of a decent?
For starters, the professional reviews are not so good - it's a
49 on Metacritic, which is one point lower than
The Marvels.
Deadline has more. General audiences aren't liking it much:
CinemaScore yesterday was a B-, which is lower than DC’s Ezra Miller tabloid impacted The Flash (B), Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (B), Ryan Reynolds’ 2011 bomb Green Lantern (B), Shazam: Fury of the Gods (B+), and Marvel Studios’ rock bottom The Marvels (B CinemaScore). Definite recommend on Screen Engine/Rentrak’s PostTrak is 52%, which is low for a planned summer tentpole of this magnitude.
In a further deep-dive on PostTrak, men who showed up at 59% gave Supergirl a very low definite recommend at 45% while women at 41% were a bit better at 62%.
Then there's the general matter of women-dominated superhero movies generally not doing too well. Yes,
Captain Marvel and
Wonder Woman were big hits at the height of the comic book movie wave, but their sequels were both huge flops, and
Birds of Prey underwhelmed.
Deadline again:
Diversity demos are 40% Caucasian, 30% Hispanic and Latino, 17% Black, and 8% Asian American. Men over 25 led at 41%, women over 25 at 26%, men under 25 at 18%, and women under at 15%. It’s said you need three demos to become a hit, and clearly that under 25 Gen Z/Gen Alpha bunch are not showing up here. Warners really wanted to connect with the under 25 female demographic and did a big push with Ulta Beauty stores and associated products.
So, if more men then women go to female-led superhero movies, and men seem to consistently prefer male-led superhero movies, then basic logic suggests that female-led ones are much riskier financial propositions.
I am not seeing a single picture of Millie Alcock in relation to this movie, or any picture anywhere, that makes her look unattractive.
I'll just say this: though she was about 25 during filming, Alcock's Supergirl looks like
a kid, or
girl, to me. That's not a thought I ever had with the
early 30s Gal Gadot in
Wonder Woman, which I paid to see in 3D in large part because of said lead actor, and I didn't regret it. Had I been in charge of this
Supergirl movie, therefore, I would almost certainly have cast someone else.
