Toy Story 5 holds off Supergirl — and exposes the new box office hierarchy

The weekend numbers around Toy Story 5 and Supergirl amount to more than a league table. According to Associated Press box-office reporting, Pixar's sequel held first place domestically with about $70m in its second weekend, while Supergirl opened in second on roughly $38m — a result AP described as a setback for Warner Bros' revamped DC operation.

Why it matters

Both films arrived with built-in awareness, but only one converted it effortlessly. Toy Story 5 did not have to explain its emotional vocabulary: audiences know the promise of toys, friendship, memory and renewal, and the brand works simultaneously as a family outing, a nostalgia trip and a child's first big-screen animation. Supergirl faced a harder test. The character sits outside the very top tier of comic-book recognition, which turned its opening into a referendum on whether DC's rebuilt slate can make a secondary hero feel like an event. An opening in the high $30 millions does not settle that question in the studio's favour.

The bigger picture

The lesson is not that audiences have abandoned superheroes; it is that the category has become selective. Viewers increasingly reward films that feel complete, emotionally legible and easy to recommend across age groups — and punish anything that reads as a side entry in someone else's long-term plan. The old franchise logic, in which every chapter was a stepping stone to a future crossover, no longer guarantees a Friday-night ticket. Family animation, meanwhile, retains a practical use-case streaming cannot fully replace: parents know exactly what a Toy Story film is for. The post-pandemic theatrical market is really several markets with different triggers. Trusted family brands can still become events; horror thrives on lean budgets and social buzz; superhero films now float between event cinema and ordinary franchise fare depending on the urgency of the specific story being sold. With Minions & Monsters entering the family corridor, the season's defining story may be the resilience of animated franchises rather than any single Pixar result.

The counter-view

One weekend should not become a verdict on an entire studio strategy. Supergirl may yet build an audience beyond its opening, and a soft debut says as much about calendar positioning and perceived necessity as about the character or the genre. The risk for Warner Bros is over-correction — blaming the audience or the category when the narrower reading is that the market now demands sharper differentiation and a clearer reason to buy a ticket this week rather than waiting for home viewing.

What happens next

Supergirl's second-weekend hold will show whether word of mouth can soften the narrative, while Toy Story 5's worldwide total — already substantial after two weeks, per AP — will keep growing through the school holidays. For DC, the practical consequence is that each forthcoming release must now make its own case, film by film, without assuming inherited loyalty will do the work.