Weekend predictions: Superman will fly like a bird, or possibly a plane

With $22.5 million already banked from Tuesday advance shows and Thursday preview shows, Superman is set to soar to an excellent opening weekend. Its previews are easily the best of the year, topping Lilo & Stitch’s $14.5 million and also beating A Minecraft Movie, which opened with a 2025-best $162.7 million after earning $10.55 million from previews. So the sky’s the limit for the man of steel, but will he flutter to something a little over $100 million or jet to $150 million plus? Our model has the analysis on how things stand right now.

Here’s the model’s “baseline” prediction for Superman, which was constructed before we had hard data on ticket sales…

Comparisons for Superman were a challenge for the model, given the fits and starts for the DC Universe over the years, but regardless of that, tracking has been excellent, with a weekend well over $100 million looking likely for a while.

The previews confirm a $100-million-plus weekend…

The worst comparable conversion from previews to a weekend total was Thor: Love and Thunder, which made just under five times its previews over its full opening weekend. If Superman manages a similar conversion rate, it will make about $112 million this weekend. That’s a fairly safe minimum expectation at this point, particularly given Superman’s generally strong reviews.

At the other extreme, Venom: Let There Be Carnage had an opening weekend multiplier of 7.76, which sets the high-end possibility for Superman at $175 million. That obviously gives us a high margin of error at this point, and the model predicts an opening of $131 million, after factoring in earnings from advance screenings on Thursday.

Here’s what the model thinks the top 10 will look like.

Given the competition with Jurassic World Rebirth and F1, Superman is probably going to be hard-pressed to leg out to over $140 million this weekend, although that’s still on the cards. A multiplier of 6 would give it $135 million, which seems like a good target. Anything over $110 million would be excellent for a “new” movie like this, and that looks to be just about money in the bank at this point.

Note: This article was updated at 1.15pm Pacific Time to reflect additional information on advance screenings.

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Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com