Contrary to its title character, "Supergirl" did not take flight. The film grossed $38 million domestically in its opening weekend, less than one-third of what "Superman" earned in its debut last summer on a comparable production budget. (Warner Bros. is already bracing to lose at least $100 million in its theatrical run.) "Supergirl" continues what has been a disconcerting trend for female-led superhero movies, following "The Marvels" and "Madame Web," which flopped at the box office in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

When the common denominator for these films is their female protagonists, the worry is that Hollywood’s biggest takeaway could be that female-led blockbusters are simply riskier bets. But "Supergirl’s" failure doesn’t illustrate a problem with its lead — it’s a problem with the genre. And if studios conflate superhero fatigue with a lack of interest in female-led blockbusters, the industry could end up overlooking an audience it has historically undervalued to its own detriment.

For much of the 21st century, superhero movies have been a blockbuster mainstay that’s reliably delivered strong box office returns. But just as moviegoers eventually tired of the Western, the genre has become one of Hollywood’s most exhausted products. Since "Avengers: Endgame" marked the peak of superhero movie dominance in 2019, only two films have grossed more than $1 billion: "Spider-Man: No Way Home" and "Deadpool & Wolverine." Meanwhile, there’s a laundry list of films that have underperformed — "Captain America: Brave New World," "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," "The Flash," "Kraven the Hunter," to name a few — as audiences have grown more selective about showing up.

In that context, a struggling genre is a poor way to measure audience demand, regardless of who’s headlining these movies. When superhero movies had more goodwill, female-led tentpoles like "Wonder Woman" and "Captain Marvel" were genuine cultural events. The most instructive insight doesn’t come from comparing "Superman" and "Supergirl," but from examining what happens when Hollywood actually delivers films with female audiences in mind. "Barbie" became the highest-grossing movie of 2023, with women making up nearly 70% of its opening weekend audience. Since then, films as wide-ranging as "Anyone But You," "The Housemaid" and "The Devil Wears Prada 2" have taken the box office by storm with female moviegoers leading the charge.

The problem is that studios have a habit of treating these successes as exceptions to the rule, rather than a foundation to build on. “The world of movies is fascinating to me because everyone has amnesia all the time,” Shonda Rhimes said in an interview with New York Times Magazine in 2015. “Every time a female-driven project is made and succeeds, somehow it’s a fluke.”

More than a decade after Rhimes made that observation, Hollywood hasn’t learned its lesson — judging by the drop in the percentage of movies led by women and girls in 2025. A study from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that women and girls led only 39% of the 100 top movies that year, down from 55% the year before. The figure amounts to a blind spot that extends to diagnosing why a film like "Supergirl" failed.

Real hostility toward female-led superhero films does exist in parts of the fanbase. Deadline’s box office post-mortem for "Supergirl" pointed to toxicity toward these movies (and their female stars) as a potential factor, something Milly Alcock addressed in interviews leading up to release.

But "Supergirl's" opening weekend audience also revealed another challenge: the film struggled to connect with the female moviegoers Warner Bros. hoped to reach. Overall, its audience skewed 59% male, while women under 25 — the demographic the studio had courted through partnerships with brands like Ulta Beauty — accounted for just 15% of ticket sales.

Those are real issues for Hollywood to reckon with, but they’re different problems from superhero fatigue more broadly. Blur those distinctions, and the industry's response is the same either way: fewer female-led films greenlit, a smaller sample size to work from, and an easier excuse the next time something like "Supergirl" underperforms.

Hollywood has confronted these shortcomings before. For decades, Black-led projects were treated as an afterthought before films like "Get Out" and "Black Panther" became commercial and cultural juggernauts. In turn, executives were forced to confront the possibility that these audiences were never unreliable — the industry’s assumptions were.

The same double standard applies behind the camera, where women have fewer opportunities to direct and face far less tolerance for commercial misfires than their male counterparts. That reality informed Patty Jenkins’ decision to turn down the chance to direct "Thor: The Dark World" years before "Wonder Woman" because she knew that failure wouldn’t just affect her own career — it could reinforce broader assumptions about whether women could direct franchise films at all.

None of this is to argue that "Supergirl" deserved a better fate. The film may have simply failed to overcome the same genre fatigue that nearly every post-"Endgame" superhero movie has to contend with. However, its underwhelming performance shouldn't become a referendum on female-led blockbusters any more than a successful film should be dismissed as a happy accident.

If Hollywood can’t distinguish a genre problem from an audience problem, the industry risks neglecting one of its most valuable demographics because executives haven’t paid enough attention to what they actually want to see.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Miles Surrey is a Brooklyn-based culture writer. His work has also appeared in The Ringer, Men’s Health, and Vox.

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