Milly Alcock's Supergirl Opens as the New DCU's Big Test

What Happened

The Girl of Steel finally has her own movie. Supergirl opened in U.S. theaters on June 26, 2026, after a Brooklyn premiere on June 22, and it lands as only the second feature in the rebooted DC Universe. Milly Alcock, last seen turning heads as a young Rhaenyra in House of the Dragon, steps into the cape as Kara Zor-El, and she does most of the heavy lifting in a film that everyone has been watching closely since James Gunn and Peter Safran took over DC Studios.

Directed by Craig Gillespie, the filmmaker behind I, Tonya, and written by Ana Nogueira, the movie draws loosely on Tom King's acclaimed comic Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. That source material trades the sunny, small-town Supergirl of older adaptations for something rawer: a harder-edged Kara on a revenge-tinged road trip across the cosmos. The cast around Alcock is stacked, too, with Matthias Schoenaerts as the villain, plus Eve Ridley, David Krumholtz, and Emily Beecham filling out the ensemble.

Two names loom especially large in the marketing. David Corenswet briefly reprises his Clark Kent, threading Kara's story into the same continuity as last year's Superman, and Jason Momoa shows up as the bounty hunter Lobo, a cigar-chomping, motorcycle-riding wildcard who has been all over the trailers. For a franchise still trying to prove it has a plan, Supergirl is a big, visible swing.

Why It Matters

This is the movie that tells us whether the new DC Universe is actually working. When Gunn and Safran rebooted the whole enterprise, they pitched it as a single connected story told across films, TV, and animation, with Superman kicking things off and Supergirl as the crucial follow-up. One hit can be luck. Two in a row starts to look like a foundation.

The early numbers complicate the story. Tracking for the opening weekend slid from north of $55 million down to roughly $40 million in the run-up to release, a softer projection than Warner Bros. would have hoped for from a tentpole superhero launch. In a post-saturation market where audiences have grown choosy about caped crusaders, even a well-reviewed entry has to fight for attention, and Supergirl is arriving in a summer crowded with franchise plays.

What is at stake is bigger than one weekend. Supergirl is positioned as part of the DCU's opening salvo, branded "Chapter One: Gods and Monsters." If Kara connects with audiences, she becomes a pillar Gunn can build years of stories around. If she stumbles commercially despite decent reviews, it revives the uncomfortable question of whether general audiences still have an appetite for yet another shared superhero universe.

Reaction

Critics landed somewhere in the middle, and the split is telling. Almost everyone agrees on one thing: Milly Alcock is the real deal. Reviewers praised how naturally she inhabits Kara, giving the film an underdog warmth even when the script around her wobbles. The production design and a clutch of clever needle-drops earned points too, with some writers comparing the vibe more to Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy than to the grim DC films of the last decade.

The other crowd-pleaser is Momoa. Early reactions singled out his Lobo as a scene-stealing blast, the kind of swaggering supporting turn that fans immediately want more of. The complaints clustered around the antagonist: several reviews found Schoenaerts' villain underwritten and a touch bland, the familiar weak link that has sunk plenty of otherwise solid superhero movies. On the aggregators the film settled into "mixed-to-positive" territory rather than breakout rave status.

Fans, predictably, were more enthusiastic, especially anyone who loved King's comic. Social chatter leaned toward excitement about Alcock's casting and curiosity about how far the film leans into the source material's darker tone.

What's Next

The immediate question is how the weekend actually plays out versus those cooled-down projections, and whether strong word-of-mouth on Alcock can give Supergirl the legs that opening-weekend tracking can't capture. Superhero movies increasingly live or die on their second and third weekends, and a likeable lead is exactly the kind of asset that keeps a film in the conversation.

Beyond the box office, the film plants seeds. Corenswet's cameo keeps the Superman thread alive, Momoa's Lobo is an obvious candidate for a bigger role down the line, and the broader "Gods and Monsters" slate gives the studio room to course-correct or accelerate based on how Kara is received. There has already been talk of where a potential sequel might go, though much of that hinges on this opening.

Closing Thoughts

What makes Supergirl interesting is less the film itself than the moment it arrives in. The superhero genre is not dead, but it is past the era when a recognizable logo guaranteed a packed opening weekend. Studios now have to actually make the case, movie by movie, and a charismatic new lead is one of the few things that still reliably works.

That is what makes Milly Alcock the most important thing about this release. Reviews can quibble with the villain and analysts can fret over the tracking, but a star is the one ingredient a franchise cannot fake. If the new DC Universe is going to last, it needs faces audiences want to follow across a decade of stories. On the evidence of Supergirl, Alcock looks like one of them. Whether the box office agrees is the story of the next few weeks.

한글 요약

밀리 알콕 주연의 슈퍼걸(Supergirl)이 2026년 6월 22일 브루클린 시사회를 거쳐 6월 26일 미국 극장에서 개봉했습니다. 제임스 건과 피터 사프란이 새로 출범시킨 DC 유니버스(DCU)의 두 번째 작품으로, 크레이그 길레스피가 연출하고 톰 킹의 만화 슈퍼걸: 내일의 여인을 토대로 했습니다. 매티아스 스후나르츠가 악역을, 데이비드 코렌스웨트가 클라크 켄트로, 제이슨 모모아가 로보로 합류합니다.

이 영화는 새 DCU가 제대로 작동하는지를 가늠하는 시험대입니다. 지난해 슈퍼맨에 이은 두 번째 연결 작품으로 '챕터 원: 신과 괴물' 라인업의 핵심이지만, 개봉 전 주말 흥행 예상치가 5천5백만 달러대에서 4천만 달러 안팎으로 낮아지며 부담을 안았습니다. 슈퍼히어로 장르 피로감이 짙은 시장에서 호평만으로는 흥행을 장담하기 어렵습니다.

평가는 호불호가 갈렸지만, 밀리 알콕의 연기만큼은 거의 모든 평이 호평했고 제이슨 모모아의 로보도 큰 화제를 모았습니다. 반면 악역이 밋밋하다는 지적이 따랐습니다. 결국 관건은 입소문이 개봉 2~3주차 흥행으로 이어질지, 그리고 알콕이라는 새 얼굴이 DCU의 장기적 기둥이 될 수 있을지입니다. 참고: Variety, The Hollywood Reporter.