James Gunn’s new Superman reboot has exceeded both box office and critical expectations.
Released in theaters Friday, the new DC movie stars David Corenswet as the undercover, bespectacled superhero, opposite Rachel Brosnahan as his love interest, Lois Lane. Nicholas Hoult features as iconic supervillain Lex Luthor.
According to box office figures, Superman had already raked in $22.5 million in Thursday previews. By Friday, that figure had more than doubled to $56.5 million domestically. Overseas, it added $40 million, bringing its worldwide total to $96.5 million — surpassing early estimates of $90 million.
This domestic opening day total makes it the second biggest of 2025, just behind A Minecraft Movie, which debuted in April to $57.11 million, and ahead of Lilo & Stitch’s $55.94 million May opening.
Superman was projected to reach over $210 million globally after its first weekend in theaters, and it’s done just that, officially hitting $217 million, per Variety.
Written and directed by DC Studios boss Gunn, best known for his work on Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad, the retelling of the classic superhero takes a slightly different approach from other iterations.
Rather than focusing on the classic origin story of the Man of Steel, this new version finds the superhero already three years active.
“Everything needs to stand by itself,” Gunn told The Wrap in December. “I don’t want somebody to have to go see this movie and be relying on anything else. If this sets up stuff in Peacemaker, which it does, then that’s great. But that is never, ever, ever, with me, going to be something that I’m going to sacrifice even a moment or a beat in a story for, especially a movie.”
It’s safe to say the movie’s rave reviews have only fueled its impressive box office performance. At the time of writing, the title holds an 82 percent on popular review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.
“James Gunn’s Superman reboot will make you believe in superhero movies again,” The Independent’s Clarrisse Loughrey declared in her four-star review.
“Superman is a manifesto for a franchise. It had no other choice but to be. The weight of expectation is so heavy at this point that even the audience might feel a little tension in their shoulders as they shuffle in to take their seats,” she added. “[It] doesn’t just serve as a referendum for superhero films but for the cinematic future of DC as a whole.”
Superman is out in theaters now.
