Superman has leapt past the $300 million mark at the domestic box office in less than three weeks in a major milestone for James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Studios.
The pic crossed the $300 million mark early Thursday thanks to East Coast matinées after finishing Wednesday with a domestic tally of $299.7 million. It’s the first DC pic release to achieve the milestone since The Batman in 2022. That pic topped out at $369.2 million by the end of its run, not adjusted for inflation.
In a second milestone, Superman has already passed up the entire lifetime of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, which topped out at $291 million domestically in 2013, not adjusted. That film was the last solo Superman movie; in 2016, Snyder’s sequel Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice grossed $330.4 million domestically. (The latest Superman pic will soon overtake Dawn of Justice as well.) Globally, Superman has already cleared $500 million.
Other accomplishments: Superman, which is heading into its third weekend, is only the fourth title of 2025 so far to cross $300 million in North America behind Warners’ A Minecraft Movie and Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch — those two films have since climbed north of $420 million — and Universal‘s Jurassic World Rebirth, which has earned nearly $310 million domestically to date.
Gunn’s film faces plenty of competition, between a glut of male-skewing titles such as Rebirth, F1: The Movie and, most notably, Marvel Studios‘ The Fantastic Four: First Step, which opened last weekend to a promising $117.6 million domestically and $99 million internationally for a global bow of $216.6 million.
Both superhero films have been embraced to almost the same degree by reviewers and moviegoers alike. Each film was bestowed with an A CinemaScore by consumers, although Fantastic Four does boast a slightly higher critics and audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, or 86 percent and 93 percent, respectively, versus 83 percent and 91 percent, respectively for Superman.
Gunn is in the unique position of both directing Superman and running DC Studios alongside Safran. The big-budget tentpole is their inaugural release as they go about reinvigorating the DC brand at the behest of Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav after such recent misses including The Flash, Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom, Blue Beetle and Shazam! Fury of the Gods.
Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic in in The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios
Just as Superman is a boost for DC, the early performance of Fantastic Four is a seminal win for the Kevin Feige-run Marvel Studios, which has likewise been plagued by a string of misses, excluding 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine. Not to mention that Fantastic Four was a troubled film franchise when Feige and his team inherited the property as a result of the Disney-20th Century Fox merger in 2019.
Through Wednesday, Fantastic Four had earned $151 million domestically and $280 million globally, similar to where Superman ranked at the same point in its run (that’s impressive, considering the Fantastic Four are not marquee comic book heroes like Superman).
Mister Fantastic and his family are expected to stay atop the domestic box office chart this weekend with an estimated haul of $45 million. And if all goes as planned, the pic will finish the weekend with a worldwide tally well north of $300 million as it heads for the $200 million milestone domestically.
Pamela Anderson plays Beth Davenport and Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr. in ‘The Naked Gun’ from Paramount Pictures.
Paramount Pictures
The wild card of the Aug. 1-3 weekend is Paramount’s well-reviewed The Naked Gun revival, produced by Seth MacFarlane and starring Liam Neeson as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., who is trying to follow in the footsteps of his father, Frank Drebin, the infamous comedic character played by Leslie Nielsen in the original films.
Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand, Cody Rhodes, Liza Koshy, Eddie Yu and Danny Huston also star. The fourth film in the franchise, directed by Akiva Schaffer from a script he wrote with Dan Gregor and Doug Maudm, opens more than three decades after the last movie, 1994’s Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult.
As fate would have it, Naked Gun is the last film that will be released by the current iteration of Paramount Pictures before David Ellison’s Skydance officially closes its $8 billion merger with Paramount Global in the early part of August. Affable movie studio chief Brian Robbins — who has also been serving as one of the three (temporary) CEOs of Paramount Global since sale talks began last year — intends to step down once Ellison takes control of the entertainment conglomerate and installs his executive team both in the C-suite and at Paramount Pictures, according to sources.
The smart and sassy marketing campaign for Naked Gun has gone all out in promoting the film’s hilarious tone, as well as the passing of the comedic torch to Neeson. Tracking services show the movie opening in the $15 million range domestically, while others think it could come in closer to $20 million or even higher.
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