Superman and dinosaurs smash Smurfs and Jennifer Love Hewitt at the box office

James Gunn's first DC Studios film, the reboot of "Superman," has nixed skepticism by being the highest-grossing film for another week. After making $57.3 million domestically, the Man of Steel has brought in $236 million on the domestic front. A trickier sell internationally, "Superman" has made $406 million globally. However, the movie has already outgrossed "Thunderbolts*" and will soon outgross "Captain America: Brave New World." It won't be some sort of runaway smash success, but "Superman" is going to make plenty of money, on top of the good reviews. Throw in HBO Max views, and Warner Bros. and DC Studios are going to be happy, and reasonably so. Of course, Superman is no match for dinosaurs, at least on the global scale.

"Jurassic World Rebirth" got a heavy push worldwide, mostly because the franchise still plays in Asia, particularly China, which is not really the norm any longer. To that end, "Rebirth" finished second in the box office this weekend, and after three weeks in theaters it has made $276 million domestically. That's not outpacing "Superman" by much, but thanks to global returns, "Rebirth" has made $647 million in total. Now, the film is still on pace to be the first "World" movie to finish below a billion bucks at the box office, and the fact American audience seem to be not terribly invested is probably the main driver there.

So what of these new films in theaters? The legacy sequel to "I Know What You Did Last Summer," which has the same name, finished third with $13 million domestically. However, that was kind of what was expected, especially given that both critics and audiences have not enjoyed the film. It got a C+ cinema score, which is about as bad as it gets. Audiences usually give A's if a movie is good or F's if its polarizing and interesting. A C+ is a death knell. That being said, "Summer" has made $24.6 million worldwide and the movie cost $18 million to make, so it'll turn a profit and everything will be fine. Just don't expect another one.

The real fiasco of this weekend is the latest "Smurfs" movie. It finished fourth, making $11 million domestically and $36 million worldwide. This one wasn't cheap, costing $58 million plus whatever was spent on marketing. We don't mind dipping into schadenfreude a bit here. The press for "Smurfs" was silly, with the director talking about getting to the heart of what makes Smurfs tick (nobody cares, nobody ever will care) and a lot of talk about this being a passion project for Rihanna. You know, the famous, rich, incredibly-successful musician Rihanna? We didn't expect Paramount's marketing team to just say, "Look, we have the rights to Smurfs so we're going to make a Smurfs movie to see if kids will drag their parents to see it!," but the approach to promotion was worth an eye roll.

The Fantastic Four joins the fray next week, and it will be interesting to see how it lands so soon after "Superman." 

(h/t Variety)