When Milly Alcock, the new star of Warner Bros. and DC’s upcoming *Supergirl* film, opened her mouth in recent press interviews, she likely didn’t expect the reaction she got. But after a series of public comments about the film’s predecessor and her own casting, a significant portion of the fanbase has turned on her, leaving the studio scrambling to salvage interest in one of its most critical releases. The tension comes down to money, and the numbers paint a grim picture.
The film is currently tracking to open between $47 million and $65 million domestically—a total theatrical run projection that analysts point out wouldn’t even be half of what *Superman* pulled in on opening day. With a production and marketing budget of roughly $245 million, these figures place *Supergirl* in the same danger zone as *The Marvels*, one of the most infamous box office bombs of the past decade. Tracking is an early estimate, not a final result. But the downward trend is hard to argue with.
After Alcock’s first set of press comments, interest in the film slid from 48% to 46%, a small but telling dip that has the studio worried. To counter that slide, Warner Bros. has already resorted to attaching *Superman* footage to the *Supergirl* marketing materials, hoping to piggyback on the success of their other tentpole. The controversy began when Alcock, speaking about the original 1937 animated classic, called the love story “weird.
” She told fans not to expect Superman to save her, that there would be no prince, no dreaming about true love. Instead, she promised a Supergirl who is fearless, fair, and the leader her late father wanted her to be. She then addressed potential criticism directly, telling reporters she’s been joking about Christian fathers hating her, and asserting that if you’re pissing off the right people, you’re doing okay. She added that she expects backlash simply because she’s a woman in the franchise, a comment that drew mixed reviews.
Some fans saw it as bracing for unfair sexism, while others felt the comment was a preemptive shield against legitimate criticism. Things escalated when a DC co-head reportedly had to make a personal call to Alcock, and another exec allegedly ugly-cried when she first donned the suit. When pressed on exactly how much she was paid for the movie, Alcock responded that she wasn’t going to tell anyone the real number, brushing it off with a “no comment” that did little to calm the fan unrest. James Gunn, the co-head of DC Studios, called reports about her pay “not even a little bit true,” but has yet to provide the actual figure.
The irony is not lost on observers. Alcock’s comments frame her as self-aware and grounded, but the mounting backlash centers on the optics of a film starring someone most audiences have barely heard of, with a production history that seems more focused on press drama than on building a compelling story. While the *Supergirl* comic source material is genuinely beloved by its readers, and good word-of-mouth can occasionally flip a soft opening, the current forecast is sobering. As one analyst bluntly put it, the situation has shifted from a silent worry to a full-blown fire.
By leaning into the controversy instead of stepping away from it, both the studio and Alcock have turned a difficult summer release into a high-stakes gamble. With *Toy Story 5*, a new *Moana*, and a host of other major movies crowding the same release window, the margin for error is razor thin. If *Supergirl* fails to hit even its low-end projections, the resulting headline won’t just be about a lost box office—it will be about a star at odds with her own audience, and a studio that refused to pivot.