“Supergirl” earned just $65.5 million worldwide in its first four days in theaters, despite a $170 million budget — branding it an indisputable bomb. The film would need to rake in $295 million in order to break even, according to our sources. (Spoiler alert: It won’t.)
But the tentpole’s dismal math isn’t the most compelling subplot to emerge from the Milly Alcock-led film’s disastrous opening weekend.
On June 24, Variety’s Owen Gleiberman published a withering review of “Supergirl,” prompting a spate of hit pieces across the blogosphere aimed at the magazine’s chief film critic.
Here’s a sampling of the headlines: “You Don’t Have to Like ‘Supergirl’ But Writing a Sexist Review Just Makes You Gross,” “Variety’s Mean-Spirited ‘Supergirl’ Review: Who Was It Really Targeting?” and “Supergirl Deserves Better Than the Current Media Feeding Frenzy.”
The takeaway was clear: The award-winning critic poses a greater threat to the intergalactic order than heavily pierced psychopath Krem of the Yellow Hills (the villain of the film played by Matthias Schoenaerts).
It didn’t take long for rumors to start circulating that a member of Alcock’s team “planted” at least one of the stories that focused on Gleiberman’s age (“late 60s”), and accused him of having “a reputation for being out-of-touch with certain things.” Said things are not specified.
A rep for the Aussie actress said: “Absolutely not true!!!”
Adding to the conspiracies, at least one of the writers who name-checked Gleiberman took an all-expenses-paid trip to the “Supergirl” set in London, making their hot take seem less than objective.
Each Web story had a different grievance with Gleiberman’s review: One glommed on to his characterization of Ana Nogueira’s screenplay as “a comic-book movie with the worst script I can remember,” while another bristled at Gleiberman’s description of Alcock as “Kristy McNichol crossed with the Feral Kid from ‘The Road Warrior’ in oversize Penny Lane sunglasses.”
A rep for the magazine tells Page Six Hollywood: “Variety has a long history of supporting our critics and encouraging them to express their honest and independent points of view. We fully stand by Owen Gleiberman and his review of ‘Supergirl.’” (Full disclosure: I worked with Gleiberman at Variety for three years.)
The Gleiberman pile-on left film critics rattled and confused.
“First of all, I think Kristy McNichol is awesome. And the Feral Kid from ‘The Road Warrior’? Milly Alcock is made to look scrappy. So, I don’t think they’re unfair analogies. That line seems pretty harmless to me,” says one critic at a rival publication.
(One online piece slamming Gleiberman alleged that, “Right-wing circles on social media have been using screenshots of the Feral Kid [played by Emil Minty in the 1981 film] to body shame Alcock and criticize her appearance for weeks now.”)
Another critic calls the outrage aimed at Gleiberman “embarrassing,” but shrugged at its novelty. “A version of this has been going on for a long time by forces far more powerful than these people,” the critic notes.
All this comes at a time when critics are under siege.
On June 27, “Criminal Minds” star Paget Brewster lambasted a ScreenRant writer on X over a story that made some seemingly benign critiques of the TV drama. “You don’t know that bad pics and bad reviews can lead to 350 people losing their jobs. Sell vintage. Work at a shelter. Do something better than what you do now. Because right now you suck,” Brewster wrote, drawing immediate backlash from other critics. (Brewster apologized and deleted the post.)
Likewise, “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan recently dismissed mean critics with a two-word sendoff: “F–k ’em.”
And Seth Rogen bizarrely suggested this week during a podcast interview tied to his new movie “The Invite” that critics can be too insensitive. “I think if most critics knew how much it hurts the people that made the things that they are writing about, they would second guess the way they write these things.”
(It’s worth noting that Sheridan enjoys some of the best ratings on television, and Rogen has received rave reviews for “The Invite” as well as his most recent TV series, “The Studio.”)
Meanwhile, at least one of the authors who penned a Gleiberman hit piece isn’t backing down. The writer published a new piece on Tuesday with the headline: “When Will Trade Publications Learn From Their Mistakes and Stop Doubling Down?”
The writer expressed outrage that Variety was recirculating Alcock quotes from a May cover story on social media that might provide fresh meat for her “trolls.” (It’s a common practice to re-social snippets from a cover story to coincide with a film’s opening.)
Reporters we talked to were quick to note that the “doubling down” verbiage about Variety, and the lament about Alcock’s cover story being resurrected amid the disastrous opening, were being shared by vested parties on Team Supergirl. Stay tuned.