Supergirl hasn’t gone over as planned, as the second movie in James Gunn’s DC Universe has flopped at the box office and gotten middling reviews. Though Milly Alcock’s performance as Kara has been widely praised, the movie hasn’t taken off, and according to a new story from The Hollywood Reporter, some of the film’s disjointedness may have come from an internal creative struggle between director Craig Gillespie and DC Studios.
According to the Hollywood Reporter story, DC held test screenings for two different Supergirl cuts, one from Gillespie, and another from the studio. According to the outlet’s sources, Gillespie and Gunn “were not creatively aligned,” though some of the sources dispute that it went beyond “healthy friction.” However, the back and forth led to test screenings of two different versions of the film, and the test scores never really escaped the 60-70 range on a 100-point scale.
Supergirl filming wrapped in May of 2025, and after a December screen test wasn’t received that well, DC took charge of the post-production and made its own cut, also bringing in Mortal Kombat II writer Jeremy Slater to work on revisions, though THR says the extent of his involvement is “unclear.” One change that was made involved the climactic battle between Supergirl and villain Krem’s forces, and another was the film’s use of needle drops. The final movie’s use of a Kelty Greye and KidMotel acoustic cover of Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle” has been widely derided, but Gunn apparently wanted a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” which ultimately lost out to the Jimmy Eat World cover.
In the end, DC forced a “bakeoff” between Gillespie’s cut and the studio’s, with Gillespie’s Director’s Cut version being about 11 minutes longer and featuring more Krem. DC Studios’ version of the film managed to score about two points higher in the test screenings, and thus is the Supergirl we saw in theaters. You can read THR’s report for some more of the minutiae, but it ultimately makes me wonder if we’ll see a Director’s Cut of the film down the line that includes those additional 11 minutes.
Despite the speed bump, the DCU is still on track to continue with horror movie Clayface later this year, and a Superman sequel slated for 2027.