Earlier this month, writer-director James Gunn’s Superman leapt to a nine-figure box-office opening in a single bound. Over its introductory weekend in theaters, the third Man of Steel reboot released this millennium sold $125 million in tickets in North America. It was 2025’s third-biggest domestic debut after A Minecraft Movie and Disney’s “live-action” Lilo & Stitch. Starring David Corenswet (as “Big Blue”), The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s Rachel Brosnahan (Lois Lane), and an uncharacteristically butch Nicholas Hoult as Supe’s smooth-domed super-nemesis Lex Luthor, the 11th franchise iteration landed the highest opening gross of any stand-alone Superman feature and handily surpassed 2013’s Zack Snyder–directed Man of Steel ($116 million in its first three days). MoS, of course, went on to accumulate a healthy $670.1 million in torn tickets.
The $225 million Gunn Superman’s kryptonite, however, came in the form of what industry number crunchers lament as a relatively lackluster opening in 78 foreign territories — international returns that totaled “just” $95 million over the July 11–13 weekend. “If there’s any softness here, it’s overseas,” analyst David A. Gross wrote in his FranchiseRE box-office newsletter. “Superman has always been identified as a quintessentially American character and story, and in some parts of the world, America is currently not enjoying its greatest popularity.” Added Variety in an opening-weekend postmortem: “Box office watchers say they aren’t surprised Superman started stronger in the U.S. compared to overseas because the character — whose motto is ‘Truth, justice and the American way’ — is the quintessential star-spangled hero.” And on The Ankler podcast, entertainment columnist Richard Rushfield pondered Superman’s foreign performance in terms of a recent poll by the Pew Research Center indicating plummeting goodwill toward the U.S. in more than a dozen countries. “I think the brand is in bad shape right now,” he said of brand America. “It gives the movies a boulder to have to push up the hill. It seems to be manifesting everywhere else: in business, in culture and in polls. So why wouldn’t it with these most American movies?”
In an interview with Rolling Stone published nine days after Superman’s release, Gunn himself — the 58-year-old Suicide Squad and Guardians of the Galaxy filmmaker is also the co-chairman and co-CEO of Warner Bros.’ comic-book movies division DC Studios — seized on this narrative to provide a rationale for why one of summer’s most anticipated tentpoles did well but perhaps not good enough. “Superman is not a known commodity in some places,” Gunn said. “That affects things. And it also affects things that we have a certain amount of anti-American sentiment in the world right now. It isn’t really helping us.”
Superman entered the movies marketplace with any number of potential frailties: the absence of a marquee star, perceptions of superhero fatigue (especially abroad), IP that unlike Spider-Man or Batman has ebbed and flowed from public consciousness for the past two decades. But pinning its underwhelming financials on anti-American sentiment presents more than a few troubling implications for an already beleaguered Hollywood. In an era when President Trump’s whipsaw imposition of tariffs has been wreaking havoc on world stock exchanges, DOGE cuts to humanitarian aid have eroded American “soft” power, and U.S. military support for Israel has come under intense criticism, is overtly American aesthetic the kiss of death for Hollywood’s premium movie product?
In fact, Superman isn’t the first major studio film this year to score at homeland multiplexes while logging relatively lackluster box office abroad. In the spring, Ryan Coogler’s vampire-period-musical-body-horror-thriller Sinners did robust business domestically but struggled to connect with audiences around the world ($278.5 million in the U.S. and Canada versus $87.3 million internationally). “Yes, it’s a genre movie about vampires,” notes Daniel Loria, editorial director of BoxOffice Pro. “But it’s also a very culturally specific American movie. It has deep roots in American history.”
Moreover, a side-by-side comparison between past and present Superman franchise installments underscores what would appear to be a softening market for uniquely American superhero triumphalism. In the U.K., Man of Steel opened to $16 million; Superman, by comparison, only did $10 million over its first three days there. Likewise, Snyder’s 2013 film opened to a healthy $64 million in China. The new Supe? A mere $6.6 million. “That’s a big drop-off,” Loria says. “You see a major discrepancy. So there’s key markets where this movie isn’t performing in the way prior Superman movies did.”
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Like other industry analysts, cultural strategists, and studio executives consulted by Vulture, however, Loria fundamentally disagrees with Gunn’s remarks — not only the idea that anti-American sentiment tanked Superman but the perception the movie even undershot financial expectations at all. “I’m not sure I buy James Gunn’s reasoning for multiple reasons,” he says. “Negative sentiment toward the United States is not a new thing. It didn’t start happening during the Trump administration. At the end of the day, I look at the numbers and see a Superman movie that’s performing on par with the way DC or Marvel movies have performed in the post-pandemic box office.”
Comscore senior analyst Paul Dergarabedian points out that this summer’s other big comic-book movie, Fantastic Four: First Steps, opened to $100 million — a smidge more than Superman — but has so far avoided negative headlines around soft international box office. “It shows how important the perceptions of a movie can be,” Dergarabedian says. “You can have two movies do virtually the same international gross, and one is perceived as weak and one is perceived as stronger.” He adds, “There was this idea that Superman doesn’t travel like some characters do. But I think sometimes we’re searching for a problem where there is none. A solution in search of a problem.”
Linda Ong is the CEO and founder of Cultique, a cultural insights and strategic advisory firm that helps major brands — including a number of entertainment conglomerates and streamers — identify trends and calibrate their marketing strategies. Rather than ascribe Superman’s inability to meet financial benchmarks to anti-American feeling, she feels the trouble overseas began with the movie’s messaging. “I would say the narrative that came from the studio and Gunn’s words — that the film was a parable of immigration — were picked up and amplified globally, often in a critical light,” Ong says.
Superman’s meh international returns can also be understood as reflective of the worldwide audience tiring of Hollywood’s cultural diktats. “We also see that the U.S. is really losing its status as an epicenter of global culture. You now have countries like Korea doing gangbusters with K-pop, K-drama, Squid Game, as a cultural exporter and manufacturer,” Ong continues. “And a lot has been written lately about the youth moving more conservative. Part of that is a rejection of decades of progressivism and progressive values, which had become the Establishment. The youth has always been anti-Establishment. This is a rejection of Hollywood also.”
To be sure, at no point in Gunn’s iteration of Superman is the phrase “Truth, justice, and the American way” uttered. And while the caped Kryptonian does ultimately save the world, he never wraps himself in the star-spangled banner; the movie’s most naked Americana occurs when Superman (as Clark Kent) travels home to Kansas to lick his wounds. There, he encounters Ma and Pa Kent, who remind Superman that while he is not technically an earthling, actions equal identity. And he has been this planet’s savior basically since he learned to fly and shoot lasers out of his eyes. Spoiler alert: Superheroism ensues.
As of Tuesday, Superman’s cumulative gross stood at $551.3 million: $316 million from North America and $235.3 million — or 42.6 percent — from foreign territories. I phoned up an executive at a rival studio to ask if anti-American sentiment has been hurting other big movies this year. After practically laughing in my face, he started citing box-office evidence to the contrary. Since late May, Lilo & Stitch has taken in more than $1 billion globally, nearly 60 percent of that from foreign ticket sales, though the film takes place in Hawaii and is structured around the 50th state’s signature concept of ‘ohana. The dinosaur carnage in Jurassic World Rebirth, meanwhile, stars Americans and Britons performing with American accents — Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, and Rupert Friend — and could never be mistaken for the cinema of any other country. JWB has grossed $723.8 million since July 1 — nearly 58 percent of that overseas — and is expected to become Hollywood’s highest-grossing film internationally by the end of summer.
“If there were actual truths pointing to this tariff shit or anti-American whatever it is, everything would be down, all our movies would be down,” this executive says. “Underperformance is underperformance. Superman just isn’t traveling.”
