It’s only been a little more than a month since James Gunn’s Superman was released in United States theaters, and the DCU movie is already headed home.
It has now been officially announced that Superman will be available to rent or purchase on digital retailers such as Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home on Friday, August 15, 2025. Since the movie opened theaters on July 11, 2025, this means that said digital release comes approximately 35 days after its official premiere.
That’s pretty quick, especially for a giant superhero blockbuster. And it doesn’t set the best precedent for the future of cinema.
A quick digital release for Superman sets (another) bad precedent
Remember the 2007 movie Firehouse Dog? Starring Josh Hutcherson and Bruce Greenwood? Probably not. It wasn’t that big of a hit at the time and has been seemingly forgotten since then. But I’m going somewhere with this, I promise.
That movie was released in theaters in April 2007 and then arrived on physical media in July. I remember renting that movie from Blockbuster shortly after it became available. A family friend stopped by and, upon seeing the Firehouse Dog DVD sitting on our table, said something along the lines of, “You can already rent that? I saw that in theaters just four months ago! I remember when you had to wait a year to rent something!”
Granted, this family friend was on the elderly side, I don’t remember having to wait a year to rent something like she recalled, but four months. Less than twenty years ago, a four-month timeline was enough to get a reaction out of people. Obviously, things have changed since 2007. We have streaming now, as digital release dates weren’t a thing back then. That’s going to escalate the home video release date process, for sure.
But think back to the 2000s for a second. Did we ever think there was going to be a period where a huge summer movie that everyone was excited to see would be available to watch at home in just 35 days? Would we have even wanted that back then? Do we want it now? Doesn’t it just kind of take away, a bit, from the magic of the theatrical experience? Is this the future we want for movie theaters?
Superman continued to be a box office performer a month after its release
It’s not a huge secret why Warner Bros. Pictures is doing it, either; as soon as the movie stops making a certain amount of money in theaters, they pivot to advertising for a home video release. With a quick 35-day turnaround, this means they don’t have to launch two different marketing campaigns and, instead, can combine them into a single prolonged one.
Rather than going off on a rant about how millionaire David Zaslav isn’t willing to spend any more promoting art than he absolutely has to, let’s look at some box office numbers. Superman has made roughly $579.2 million worldwide. That’s not the biggest number you’ve ever seen before, but, hey, that’s still a lot of money — it’s 2025, and the days of every superhero movie making a billion dollars are probably behind us. A $600 million figure is nothing to sneeze at.
The movie is still making money. This past weekend, it came in sixth domestically, bringing in another $7.8 million. While The Fantastic Four: First Steps is also playing in theaters, there aren’t any other big superhero movies coming out for a while; Superman could continue to have legs if they kept it in theaters.
Instead, a 35-day home video release date actively encourages anyone who was either on the fence about Superman or maybe doesn’t get out to the cineplex as often as some of us to stay home and wait. The movie still makes money from home rentals and purchases, sure, but those aren’t figures Warner Bros. takes into account when planning future theatrical releases. If anything, it hurts them, while it also makes pirating infinitely easier.
Superman is a hit, and it’s exciting to think of all the different directions the DCU could go from here; let’s just hope Warner Bros. and DC Studios don’t keep standing in its own way as things continue.
