‘Superman’ Is About To Break A 17-Year-Old DC Curse

August 3, 2025 adminsr

Box office hounds are currently looking at the horse race between Superman and Fantastic Four, the former of which will apparently top the latter unless some dramatic shift takes place in the imminent future.

It’s not just a “win” for DC and the new DCU, it’s something that goes well beyond that. If this happens with Supermanand it’s almost certain it’s about to, this will be the first time a DC movie was the highest-grossing comic book movie of a given year since 2008. Can you guess what that was? Yep, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.

Of course, 2008 was also when the MCU began with Iron Man. The DCEU did not kick off until 2013 with Man of Steelbut in that five year gap there was nothing that topped Marvel (even The Dark Knight Rises), and even the biggest DCEU movie, Aquamandid not beat out Marvel’s big entry that year, Avengers: Infinity War (of course it didn’t).

What’s the full list? I think it’s interesting to take a look at. I’m going to start at 2006 just to give a frame of reference (the previous two years were Marvel too, naturally):

2006 – X-Men: The Last Stand
2007 – Spider-Man
2008 – The Dark Knight
2009 – X-Men Origins: Wolverine
2010 – Iron Man 2
2011 – Captain America: The First Avenger
2012 – The Avengers
2013 – Iron Man 3
2014 – Guardians of the Galaxy
2015 – Avengers: Age of Ultron
2016 – Captain America: Civil War
2017 – Spider-Man: Homecoming
2018 – Avengers: Infinity War
2019 – Avengers: Endgame
2020 – No Marvel movies were even out due to COVID, DC had Birds of Prey and Wonder Woman 1984the latter of which was released simultaneously on HBO Max. Bizzare, bad year, as we all know.
2021 – Spider-Man: No Way Home
2022 – Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness
2023 – Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
2024 – Deadpool and Wolverine
2025 – Superman, which will beat out Fantastic Four, Thunderbolts and Captain America: Brave New World this year.

Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, this trend is unlikely to continue. If it hits its release date, the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day is likely to crush Supergirl at the box office. After that, there are two Avengers movies that could go up against The Batman Part II one of those years, but I don’t think that would beat either.

Still, this is a significant achievement for Superman and DC. One that may not happen all that often from here, but with Marvel’s relative declines, who knows, it may start occurring more and more.

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