Latest / Brighter Path: Data, Marketing, Entertainment, and Storytelling / Supergirl, Milly Alcock, and the Future of Franchise Halo

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Supergirl, Milly Alcock, and the Future of Franchise Halo · Brighter Path: Data, Marketing, Entertainment, and Storytelling

• 0:00
  Imagine you have over $100 million in promotional budget
• 0:04
  alone just for marketing, which is a.
• 0:06
  Staggering amount of money, even for Hollywood.
• 0:08
  Right. It is a massive war chest and
• 0:11
  you take this money and you basically plaster a movie's
• 0:15
  brand across like KFC, Samsung, Waymo and Ulta Beauty.
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  You are essentially wallpapering the American commercial
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  landscape. Exactly.
• 0:23
  You literally cannot walk down a commercial street right now
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  without seeing the S shield. It is everywhere.
• 0:28
  That's ubiquitous, yeah. But here is the crazy part.
• 0:31
  We are 10 days out from the release of this massive
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  superhero blockbuster, right? And the number one complaint
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  from the target audience, I mean they are screaming this across
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  Reddit, Tiktok, Twitter, is that they quote, can't find the
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  marketing. Which sounds completely
• 0:47
  paradoxical. It sounds impossible.
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  How does a massive Hollywood campaign achieve near
• 0:52
  invisibility? How do you spend $100 million to
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  be seen and end up a ghost? Well, it sounds like a broken
• 0:59
  algorithm, but it is actually a fundamental misunderstanding of
• 1:03
  human psychology. OK, unpack that a little for me.
• 1:05
  So you can buy all the visual real estate in the world, right?
• 1:08
  But if the image on the Billboard or the bucket of
• 1:11
  chicken doesn't offer a compelling, urgent reason to
• 1:14
  leave your house, the human brain just filters it out as
• 1:17
  background noise. It just becomes part of the
• 1:18
  scenery. Exactly.
• 1:20
  We are naturally very good at ignoring things that don't
• 1:23
  demand our immediate action. OK, let's really unpack this
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  because today we are going completely behind the curtain.
• 1:30
  Welcome to a special deep dive into the fascinating and
• 1:33
  honestly sometimes brutal intersection of data, marketing
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  and the entertainment industry. And we have some incredible
• 1:39
  source material today. And we really do.
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  Our mission today is to dig into an exclusive proprietary
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  Intelligence Report. This is from Chris Colombo and
• 1:47
  the consultancy Brighter Path and it is dated June 232026.
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  So this is incredibly current. Data hot off the presses and the
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  subject of this Intelligence Report is DC Studios new movie
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  Supergirl. It's directed by Craig
• 2:01
  Gillespie, stars Millie Alcock, and it opens this very week.
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  And I think it's important to state the bottom line right up
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  front here because the stakes laid out in this document are
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  terrifying for the studio. Yeah, laid out for us.
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  What are we looking at? We are tracking a catastrophic
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  slide in the opening weekend projections, so early models had
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  this film debuting at a very healthy $55 million, maybe even
• 2:25
  higher. Which would be a great start for
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  a character like this. A fantastic start, but as of
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  this report, mere days before release, that floor has
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  collapsed. It has slid down to a very
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  dangerous 39 to $51 million range.
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  Wow. I mean, when I look at a drop
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  like that, my first instinct is to assume that a massive scandal
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  broke, or the Star got cancelled, or maybe there's a
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  natural disaster keeping people at home.
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  Right, you look for an external shock to the system.
• 2:53
  Exactly. But the Brighter Path report
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  tells a completely different story, and that is what we are
• 2:58
  exploring today. We're going to show you exactly
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  how Hollywood measures your desire to go to the movies.
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  Because we aren't just looking at a guy with a clipboard
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  outside a mall anymore asking if you like superheroes.
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  Thank goodness, right? Those days are over.
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  Long over, we are looking at demand attribution.
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  This is the actual math of why people do or do not buy tickets.
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  And demand attribution. I mean, that is the forensic
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  science of consumer behavior, right?
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  That's a great way to put it. It does not care about what
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  people say they want, It only cares about what people are
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  mathematically doing on their phones and their computers.
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  Because what people say and what they do are often 2 entirely
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  different things. Always the consultants at
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  Brighter Path, what they do is they analyze the gap between
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  someone watching a trailer on YouTube and that exact same
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  person opening a new tab to search for Fandango pre sales.
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  So they are tracking the actual digital footprints of intent.
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  Precisely. They are assigning A literal
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  dollar value to the sentiment velocity on a TikTok fan edit.
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  They're scraping comment sections to measure how quickly
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  passive curiosity converts into a financial transaction.
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  It is honestly kind of wild how granular this gets.
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  It is the only way to survive in modern Hollywood.
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  So to understand the sliding projection for Supergirl, we
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  first have to look at what this report calls the broken middle
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  of the demand funnel. Because on paper, if you just
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  look at the top of the funnel, it looks fantastic.
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  Yeah, let's pull the numbers from the quorum data that they
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  cite in the report. Awareness for this movie is
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  currently sitting at 69%. Which is very high.
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  Right. More than 2/3 of the target
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  demographic knows this movie is coming out.
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  Plus, it just jumped 13 points in two weeks.
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  And the report actually flags that as the single largest jump
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  on their entire tracking board. Which is huge.
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  And on top of that, interest is sitting at 51%, right?
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  So if I am a studio executive and I'm sitting in Burbank
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  looking at my dashboard, a 13 point awareness spike tells me
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  my marketing team is absolutely crushing it.
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  I mean, why wouldn't I be popping champagne right now?
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  I would advise putting the champagne down immediately.
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  Yeah. Why is that?
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  Because that 13 point spike is the ultimate trap of vanity
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  metrics. You see, top line awareness
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  simply means a consumer has visually registered the
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  existence of a product. OK, so they saw a logo.
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  Yes, if a Waymo autonomous car drives past you with a Supergirl
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  logo on it, your brain logs the data point.
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  But what is the mechanism of conversion there?
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  Does a logo on a car door compel you to spend $20 on a movie
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  ticket this Friday? I mean, no, it really doesn't.
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  The data strongly says no. Wait, but what about the
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  interest metric? I said interest is at 51%.
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  Half the people who know about it say they are interested.
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  That has to count for something, right?
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  It counts, but interested is a passive state.
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  This is where we get into that broken middle of the funnel.
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  It's the chasm between passive awareness and.
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  Theatrical intent passive versus active.
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  Exactly the tracking for people actually searching for
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  showtimes, coordinating plans with their friends or taking
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  other credit cards to buy presale tickets that remained
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  incredibly soft. So the awareness is high but the
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  action is non existent. Right.
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  The awareness was repaired artificially late in the game.
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  They used a barrage of premier coverage, they lifted social
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  media embargoes early and they basically used brute force PR.
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  So they basically threw a ton of money at the problem at the very
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  last second, yes. Yeah, but here's the thing about
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  human psychology. You cannot rush the process of
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  conversion. Right, you can't force someone
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  to care overnight. Establishing A genuine
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  connection with a movie takes weeks, sometimes months, of
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  simmering anticipation. You have to build the lore of
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  the film in the viewer's mind. You have to make them feel like
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  they're a part of an event. Exactly and the brighter path
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  report diagnosis this Florida State, the marketing
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  successfully engineered a looks interesting perception.
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  But if fundamental failed to create and I need to see this
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  opening weekend urgency. It's like the difference between
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  a mental bookmark and an actual calendar event.
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  That's a perfect analogy. Like if I see an ad for a new
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  fusion restaurant downtown, I might think, oh that looks
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  interesting, I should check it out someday.
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  I make a mental bookmark. But you don't actually do
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  anything. Right, that bookmark doesn't
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  magically turn into me picking up my phone, paying a deposit,
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  and booking a table for 8:00 PM. This Friday.
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  Because there's no urgency, exactly.
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  The awareness is 69% but the urgency is a flat 0.
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  So if 69% of people know about it, why aren't they buying?
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  Where exactly is the leak in this funnel?
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  Who is actually showing up to the theater?
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  Well, if we look at the demographic breakdown in the
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  data, the core DC fanbase accounts for roughly 25% of the
• 7:44
  total audience demand. OK, so 1/4 of the audience.
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  That is your structural floor. These are the people who will
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  buy the Thursday night preview tickets no matter what the
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  Rotten Tomatoes score is. Right, the diehards.
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  Exactly. They read the Tom King comics,
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  they follow the industry news on Twitter.
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  They are entirely locked in, but 25% cannot sustain a massive
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  blockbuster budget. You definitely can't hit a $55
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  million opening just by preaching to the choir.
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  Not at all. You need the general superhero
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  audience, and crucially, you need the casual moviegoer.
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  And the data shows the casual fans are sitting firmly on the
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  fence right now. They are just watching and
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  waiting. Yes, they have finally been made
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  aware of the movie exists thanks to the late PR blitz, but they
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  haven't been given a single compelling reason to sacrifice
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  their weekend time and their disposable income for it.
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  Which begs the obvious question, what on earth did that $100
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  million actually buy them? That is the $1,000,000 or rather
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  the $100 million question. Right, because if the core fans
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  are carrying all the weight and the casual fans are just holding
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  out, we have to look at how this movie was actually sold to them.
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  And this brings us to what the report calls the marketing
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  illusion and a massive tonal disconnect.
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  The channel allocation here is just baffling.
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  Yeah, let's breakdown that massive Warner Brothers and DC
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  promotional partner campaign. So they secured partnerships
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  with Waymo, KFC, Samsung and Ulta Beauty.
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  Which represents over $100 million in media value.
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  And I keep coming back to those fan complaints from mid June.
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  You know the marketing is invisible.
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  When I first read that online, I thought the fans were just being
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  dramatic. They usually are, but in this
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  case they were right. That's the thing.
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  If you have $100 million in brand partnerships, how is the
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  target audience completely missing it?
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  Because, as Marshall Mcluhan famously said, the medium is the
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  message, and the medium they chose here was just corporate
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  background noise. Background noise.
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  I like that. Think about it, AKFC bucket or a
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  Samsung television display in a bright fluorescent big box
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  electronics store. It does not drive ticket urgency
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  in 2026. It just blends in with all the
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  other ads. Exactly.
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  The Brighter Path analysis points out a fatal flaw in the
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  campaign strategy. The marketing heavily
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  overweighted brand and character awareness, but it completely
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  ignored the actual tone of the film.
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  The tone. So they basically spent their
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  money saying hey everyone, Supergirl is a character that
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  exists instead of saying here is what this specific movie feels
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  like. Precisely, they sold a generic
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  superhero instead of a specific cinematic experience.
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  And from everything I'm reading in this report, the tone of this
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  film sounds incredible. Critics and early reactors are
• 10:24
  calling it a A and this is a quote Mad Max or True Grit in
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  space. Which sounds amazing.
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  It does. It's an adaptation of Tom King's
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  comic Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow, and the comic is a
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  gritty cosmic revenge road trip it.
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  Is very visceral. Right, it sounds unique, but
• 10:43
  multiple critics noted in their initial reactions quote, this is
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  not at all what I was expecting. And that phrase right there
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  should send absolute chills down the spine of any marketing
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  executive. Why is that so dangerous?
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  What's fascinating here is that when critics, these are people
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  whose entire professional job is to follow film production, when
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  they sit down in a theater and are fundamentally surprised by
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  the genre and the tone of the movie, The promotional materials
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  have completely failed. Because they were expecting one
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  thing and got something entirely different.
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  Right, A marketing failure isn't always about a lack of money.
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  Sometimes it's about a lack of accurate representation.
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  But the crazy part is the studio actually had the right materials
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  to sell this. The report highlights specific
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  moments from the early trailers that generated massive organic
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  heat online. Yes, there were a few bright
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  spots. There is a scene showing Cara's
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  23rd birthday and she's drinking, she's dancing, she's
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  acting completely reckless and messy, and Gen.
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  Z audiences ate it up on TikTok. Because it feels authentic.
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  It feels modern. Exactly.
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  And there is a line of dialogue that was the most quoted piece
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  of the entire campaign. Someone tells Cara that Superman
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  sees the goodness in everyone, and she replies.
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  I see the truth. I mean that is a master class an
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  establishing character differentiation in just 4 words.
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  It is. It defines her edge perfectly.
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  It tells the audience instantly that she isn't just a female
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  clone of her cousin. She is her own person with a
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  darker worldview. It's brilliant writing.
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  So I have to push back here, if they have these great gritty,
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  visceral, character defining assets, why on earth are they
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  hiding them behind generic corporate tie insurance?
• 12:21
  It's baffling. Like why am I looking at a
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  pristine smiling superhero pose on an Ulta makeup stand when the
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  actual movie is a grimy space western?
• 12:32
  This points to a deeper institutional fear within the
• 12:35
  studio system. OK, what kind of fear?
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  Studio executives look at a massive production budget, say
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  $175,000,000, and they panic. They get terrified of alienating
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  the broadest possible demographic.
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  So they try to play it safe. Exactly.
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  So instead of leaning into the film's unique, slightly darker,
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  auteur driven identity that the movie that Craig Gillespie
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  actually directed, they try to sand off all the edges.
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  They make it bland so it doesn't offend anyone.
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  Right, they sell a broad, safe corporate superhero product via
• 13:04
  fast food and makeup to cast the widest possible net.
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  But by trying to appeal to literally everyone, they gave no
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  one a specific compelling reason to care.
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  And the data shows that by the time they realized this mistake
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  and tried to course correct, it was just too late.
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  The damage was done the. Report notes that the single
• 13:22
  best piece of conversion creative they had, which was a
• 13:25
  trailer heavily focused on Jason Momoa playing Lobo, complete
• 13:29
  with a very clear, aggressive. Tickets on sale now Call to
• 13:32
  action That trailer didn't drop until the final two weeks of the
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  marketing window. Two weeks that is way too late
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  to change the narrative. Far too late.
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  So because the marketing failed to establish Supergirl's unique
• 13:44
  standalone identity, the studio had to relied on a much older
• 13:48
  Hollywood. Trick, right?
• 13:49
  The franchise crutch. Exactly.
• 13:51
  When you don't trust the movie you have, you lean on the rest
• 13:54
  of the franchise. So let's look at the franchise
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  scaffolding here, specifically the looming shadow of Superman
• 14:00
  and the walk up power of Jason Momoa.
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  This is where brighter paths demand attribution model gets
• 14:06
  incredibly granular and frankly fascinating.
• 14:09
  They isolate the specific drivers of intent.
• 14:11
  So they figure out exactly what is making people buy a ticket.
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  Yes. And according to their math, the
• 14:16
  DCU momentum and the post Superman context is the number
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  one driver of demand for Supergirl.
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  It accounts for 22% of the total intent to buy a ticket. 22% That
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  is nearly 1/4 of the entire audience just showing up because
• 14:29
  of the brand name attached to it.
• 14:31
  It's a huge chunk. But I mean, it makes sense,
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  right? David Crunswick's Superman film
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  came out in 2025, and it was a massive hit.
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  It grossed $618 million globally.
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  It was a very successful relaunch.
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  It worked. People liked it.
• 14:45
  It established a baseline of trust for James Gunn's new DC
• 14:49
  Universe, so audiences are willing to give the next chapter
• 14:52
  a look. It established a trust floor,
• 14:54
  yes, but it also created a massive vulnerability, which the
• 14:58
  Brighter Path report calls Superman comparison risk.
• 15:02
  OK, what does that mean in practice?
• 15:04
  The media narrative leading up to Supergirl is now completely
• 15:07
  obsessed with comparing Superman's $122 million opening
• 15:12
  weekend to Supergirl's projected 40 million.
• 15:15
  Oh, I see. It traps the movie in a
• 15:17
  narrative of failure before a single ticket is even torn.
• 15:19
  Exactly. The trades start writing
• 15:21
  articles asking what went wrong. It makes Supergirl look like a
• 15:25
  massive step backward for the studio, even if it's a good
• 15:27
  movie. But here's the part of the
• 15:30
  report that absolutely blew my mind.
• 15:32
  The reshoots. Yes, the studio was so afraid of
• 15:36
  this momentum loss that they actively altered the film to
• 15:39
  rely more heavily on Superman. The report details how
• 15:42
  successive cuts of Supergirl, which by the way, was ultimately
• 15:46
  trimmed down to a very lean one hour and 47 minutes.
• 15:50
  They actively added more footage of David Cornswett's Superman.
• 15:54
  It is a stunning admission of a lack of confidence by the
• 15:57
  studio. It really is.
• 15:58
  The studio executives felt they needed the A List hero to
• 16:01
  validate the secondary character.
• 16:03
  They literally used Superman as a commercial crutch.
• 16:07
  But doesn't that backfire? Here's where it gets really
• 16:09
  interesting to me. If I am a casual viewer and the
• 16:11
  studio keeps reminding me of the bigger, more important hero in
• 16:14
  all the marketing, doesn't that make Supergirl feel like an
• 16:16
  optional side quest? That's exactly what happens.
• 16:19
  Like the plot is literally a cosmic road trip that takes
• 16:21
  place entirely off world. Is Supergirl actually essential
• 16:24
  viewing for the DC Universe or just the spinoff?
• 16:27
  You've hit on the exact psychological mechanism that
• 16:30
  kills opening weekend urgency by tying the film's identity so
• 16:34
  closely to Superman they unintentionally positioned
• 16:37
  Supergirl and a companion piece. And a companion piece is.
• 16:41
  By definition, not essential viewing.
• 16:44
  If the movie doesn't look like an earth shattering, mythology
• 16:47
  changing event that moves the entire universe forward, the
• 16:50
  casual fan decides they can just wait.
• 16:52
  The urgency entirely evaporates. Wow.
• 16:56
  Now, there is one element in the franchise scaffolding that is
• 16:59
  driving immediate urgency, but it's completely chaotic.
• 17:02
  Let's talk about Jason Momoa as Lobo.
• 17:04
  This is a wild data point. It is, the report says he is
• 17:08
  single handedly driving 10% of the overall demand, 10%.
• 17:12
  From a supporting role. Right, and the language online
• 17:14
  isn't just passive interest either.
• 17:16
  The data shows he's generating the absolute loudest conversion
• 17:19
  language fans are screaming on Reddit.
• 17:21
  Momoa is Lobo, he's a scene stealer.
• 17:24
  He was born for this role. He is functioning as the
• 17:26
  ultimate walk up driver for this film.
• 17:28
  OK, walk me through that. What exactly does a walk up
• 17:31
  driver look like in the data model?
• 17:33
  A Walku driver is essentially the Imulse buy of the movie
• 17:36
  industry. Like buying a candy bar at the
• 17:38
  grocery store checkout. Exactly.
• 17:40
  It appeals heavily to the male comic fan and the action
• 17:44
  oriented audience. These are demographics that
• 17:47
  don't necessarily buy presale tickets on a Tuesday for a
• 17:50
  Friday showing. They aren't planners.
• 17:52
  No, they wake up on a Saturday morning, they text their friends
• 17:55
  in a group chat and they say hey, let's go see Mamoa cause
• 17:57
  some chaos. It's spontaneous.
• 17:59
  Right. His energy is incredibly
• 18:01
  infectious and it translates instantly into day of ticket
• 18:04
  sales. OK, so if I'm the studio, I'm
• 18:07
  thrilled about this, right? I mean, he's moving the needle.
• 18:11
  He is getting people into seats. You might win the weekend
• 18:14
  battle, but you risk losing the long term franchise war.
• 18:18
  How so? From a brand management
• 18:20
  perspective, this is a severe double edged sword.
• 18:23
  You have to remember Mamoa is not the star of the movie,
• 18:26
  right? I mean movies called Supergirl,
• 18:28
  not Lobo. The Brighter Path report
• 18:30
  explicitly highlights the risk of Mamoa completely
• 18:33
  overshadowing Cara's actual story.
• 18:36
  Consider the Post viewing behavior here.
• 18:38
  If the audience walks out of the theater on opening night and the
• 18:42
  only thing they were talking about on social media is how
• 18:44
  much they loved Lobo and how they immediately want a Lobo
• 18:48
  spinoff, what happens to the perception of the film?
• 18:51
  It gets hijacked. Yes, it gets culturally
• 18:54
  repositioned as that movie where Lobo shows up, rather than a
• 18:59
  triumphant foundational chapter for Cara Zorrel.
• 19:01
  Oh, it's the Boba Fett effect. Exactly the Boba Fett effect.
• 19:04
  The side character with the cool design and the chaotic energy
• 19:08
  completely eats the protagonist's cultural
• 19:10
  footprint. It happens all the time in
• 19:12
  sci-fi and fantasy. You're trying to launch a
• 19:13
  marquee female superhero, but the loudest buzz on the Internet
• 19:17
  is entirely about the violent male antihero in the supporting
• 19:21
  cast. Precisely, it undermines the
• 19:23
  core objective of the film, which was to elevate Supergirl
• 19:26
  into the A tier of cultural relevance alongside Batman and
• 19:29
  Superman. That is a fascinating problem to
• 19:32
  have, so let's pivot to the person actually carrying the
• 19:34
  emotional weight of this movie because she is receiving a
• 19:38
  massive amount of positive press on her own.
• 19:40
  Let's talk about the Millie Alcock Halo versus her
• 19:44
  standalone franchise equity. This is a crucial heavily
• 19:47
  weighted factor in the brighter path to man attribution model.
• 19:51
  Millie Alcock is currently driving 14% of the demand. 14%.
• 19:55
  Yes, that makes her the second largest positive driver of
• 19:59
  intent, trailing only the DCU brand itself.
• 20:02
  And honestly, it seems entirely justified.
• 20:04
  The first reactions from critics and the test screenings are
• 20:07
  practically glowing. The.
• 20:08
  Word of mouth on her performance is phenomenal.
• 20:11
  There is near universal praise for her.
• 20:13
  The consensus online is that she completely owns the role, and
• 20:16
  Ice Cara James Gunn even went on the record calling her a quote.
• 20:20
  The best bit of casting I've ever done in my entire life.
• 20:24
  Which is an astonishing statement coming from the man
• 20:26
  who cast the Guardians of the Galaxy.
• 20:27
  Right, That is massive validation from the boss, and
• 20:31
  the data show she is doing exactly what casting a rising
• 20:34
  star is supposed to do. She is pulling in an entirely
• 20:36
  new, incremental audience. An audience that wouldn't
• 20:39
  normally watch ADC movie. Exactly.
• 20:41
  Brighter Path tracked a direct crossover from her House of the
• 20:45
  Dragon fan base. She is bringing in Gen.
• 20:48
  Z women and she is elevating search interest dramatically in
• 20:52
  the UK and Australian markets. And the marketing that did work,
• 20:56
  the stuff we talked about earlier, leaned heavily into a
• 20:59
  specific cultural positioning for her character.
• 21:02
  Yeah, the report quotes a review from The Mary Sue that I think
• 21:04
  encapsulates this perfectly. It says everything I wanted it
• 21:07
  to be. Girls can be messy and that
• 21:09
  rules. It's a brilliant framing for a
• 21:11
  modern audience. It really is.
• 21:13
  They aren't selling her as this perfect, infallible, pristine
• 21:16
  goddess. They are selling a deeply flawed
• 21:19
  human and modern female hero. Right.
• 21:22
  But as we look at the full scope of her media presence, the
• 21:25
  report does contain an impartial analysis of a recent cultural
• 21:28
  friction point. And I think we need to look at
• 21:30
  how data models process political or cultural backlash.
• 21:34
  It's a necessary part of the demand equation.
• 21:36
  The Intelligence Report outlines an incident where Alcock made
• 21:39
  comments in a Vanity Fair interview regarding, quote,
• 21:43
  owning women's bodies. Yes.
• 21:44
  That made the rounds a few weeks ago.
• 21:46
  And this generated a degree of anti woke backlash within
• 21:50
  certain right leaning media ecosystems, with the report
• 21:54
  specifically citing coverage by outlets like Outkick, right.
• 21:58
  And as we look at the data here, it's vital to report exactly
• 22:01
  what the demand models say about this without taking sides.
• 22:04
  How does Brighter Path measure the actual box office impact of
• 22:09
  a media cycle like that? Does it actually hurt the movie?
• 22:11
  That's a great question. What they do is they look at the
• 22:14
  sentiment analysis and they cross reference it with
• 22:17
  theatrical intent. So they see the people
• 22:18
  complaining we're ever going to buy a ticket anyway.
• 22:21
  Exactly. And the intelligence clearly
• 22:23
  states that this particular backlash is entirely contained.
• 22:27
  Contained OK. It is acting only as a modest
• 22:30
  negative pressure on the male casual fan segment.
• 22:34
  When you weight it against the massive influx of Gen.
• 22:37
  Z women and the broader franchise headwinds we've
• 22:40
  discussed, it is a secondary or tertiary issue at.
• 22:43
  Best So it's loud, but it's not actually moving the financial
• 22:46
  needle. Exactly.
• 22:48
  It generated media pickup and awareness, but the math proves
• 22:52
  it is not the primary reason The overall tracking is slouting
• 22:55
  down to 39 million. The data cuts right through the
• 22:57
  noise. I love that.
• 22:59
  It removes the emotion from the equation.
• 23:01
  So the much larger issue regarding Alcock is the
• 23:04
  distinction between a cast Halo and actual franchise equity,
• 23:09
  because her personal career is objectively exploding right now.
• 23:13
  She is everywhere. So it really is.
• 23:14
  She is on the cover of Vanity Fair, she's doing GQ features.
• 23:17
  She is dominating high end fashion press at all the
• 23:20
  premieres. Her personal brand is
• 23:22
  skyrocketing, yeah, but the $1,000,000 question for the
• 23:25
  studio is does a Vanity Fair cover actually sell a movie
• 23:29
  ticket today? I would assume it helps, like
• 23:31
  they can't hurt, right? It raises awareness, certainly,
• 23:34
  but it does not guarantee conversion.
• 23:37
  Brighter Path concludes that while Alcock is incredibly
• 23:40
  talented and receiving rave reviews, she is not yet an
• 23:43
  established bankable theatrical draw.
• 23:46
  She is in a proven commodity at the box office.
• 23:49
  Right. She does not have the gravity of
• 23:51
  a Margot Robbie leading up to Barbie or a Gal Gadot during the
• 23:55
  peak of Wonder Woman. And she is fighting an uphill
• 23:57
  battle with the character itself, too.
• 23:59
  The report includes data from a Rancor DC hero poll, and
• 24:04
  honestly, it is pretty brutal. The.
• 24:06
  Character rankings are tough. Supergirl as a character in the
• 24:09
  public consciousness is ranked 25th. 25th. 25th I mean she is
• 24:13
  below Batman, Wonder Woman and The Flash, which you completely
• 24:16
  expect, but she is also ranked below Nightwing and the Martian
• 24:20
  Manhunter. Which shows a severe lack of
• 24:22
  mainstream penetration. The character fundamentally
• 24:25
  lacks standalone must see urgency for the general public.
• 24:29
  So here's the dynamic we are looking at.
• 24:31
  People aren't going to the theater because Millie Alcock is
• 24:34
  in the movie. No, The Demand Jane is highly
• 24:37
  specific in this case. It runs from DC Brand Trust to
• 24:40
  DCU Curiosity, to movie Discovery and finally to Millie
• 24:45
  Alcock appreciation. So they're discovering how great
• 24:48
  she is through the movie, rather than her star power driving
• 24:51
  millions of new people to the box office on opening night.
• 24:54
  Exactly. She is benefiting from the
• 24:56
  platform more than she is elevating the opening weekend
• 24:58
  numbers. But let me challenge this for a
• 25:00
  second. Can an incredible acting
• 25:02
  performance backed by a rapidly growing personal brand with Gen.
• 25:06
  Z women overcome a character that the general audience views
• 25:10
  as AC tier hero? Historically, yes, absolutely.
• 25:13
  I mean, Marvel did. It Marvel built an empire doing
• 25:16
  exactly that. Think of the first Guardians of
• 25:18
  the Galaxy or Iron Man. Those were not A tier characters
• 25:21
  when those movies weren't. But elevating AC tier character
• 25:24
  requires A flawless rollout. It requires a marketing campaign
• 25:28
  that perfectly articulates the tone from day one.
• 25:31
  And, crucially, it requires absolute production confidence.
• 25:35
  The public cannot see you sweat. And that leads us to one of the
• 25:38
  most damaging headwinds in this entire document, because the
• 25:41
  public didn't just see the studio sweat on this one, they
• 25:45
  saw them undergo open heart surgery.
• 25:47
  The. Production history is a major
• 25:48
  factor here. Let's talk about production
• 25:50
  transparency and the modern information ecosystem.
• 25:53
  This is perhaps the most significant demand suppression
• 25:56
  signal that blighter path identified in their analysis.
• 25:59
  Demand suppression. So this actually makes people
• 26:02
  actively not want to go. Yes, we are living in an era of
• 26:06
  unprecedented production transparency.
• 26:09
  The barrier between industry inside baseball and general
• 26:12
  audience awareness has completely dissolved.
• 26:14
  The public just knows too much. Far too much.
• 26:17
  It's wild to look the list of production history context that
• 26:20
  the report flags as massive negatives.
• 26:23
  We are talking about 10 plus test screenings.
• 26:26
  Which is an astronomical number. The report cites Jordan Ruami
• 26:29
  from World of Real stating that is more test screenings than any
• 26:33
  studio film this entire decade. The public knows they tested 3
• 26:37
  completely different endings. The indecision was broadcast in
• 26:40
  real time. They went through three entirely
• 26:42
  different composers. They started with Romain Jawadi,
• 26:44
  who does epic fantasy, you know, Game of Thrones, right?
• 26:48
  Then they brought in Tom Hulkenborg, Junkie XL, who does
• 26:51
  aggressive, pounding action like Mad Max.
• 26:54
  And finally, they landed on Claudia Sarn, who has a much
• 26:58
  moodier, more indie sensibility. It shows a complete lack of
• 27:02
  tonal clarity behind the scenes. And on top of all that, the
• 27:05
  public knows they chopped 25 minutes out of the movie,
• 27:08
  bringing the runtime down from over 2 hours. 10 years ago, the
• 27:12
  only people who would know about composer changes or test
• 27:14
  screening scores were industry insiders reading the trays over
• 27:18
  lunch in Los Angeles. It was a closed loop.
• 27:21
  But today? Today, that information is
• 27:23
  aggregated on Reddit, it's analyzed by hundreds of YouTube
• 27:26
  commentary channels, and it's discussed in the comments
• 27:29
  sections of mainstream entertainment sites.
• 27:32
  The era of keeping post production difficulties
• 27:34
  invisible is over. It completely changes the
• 27:37
  consumer experience. Think about it like this.
• 27:40
  Imagine you go to an incredibly expensive, highly rated
• 27:43
  restaurant. You order the chef's tasting
• 27:44
  menu, but while you're sitting at the table scrolling through
• 27:48
  Twitter on your phone, you find out that the head chef was
• 27:51
  fired, replaced and fired again three different times while your
• 27:55
  meal was literally cooking in the back.
• 27:57
  Oh wow. And you find out the manager
• 27:58
  came in and threw away 1/3 of the ingredients right before
• 28:02
  they plated it. That is a brilliant way to frame
• 28:04
  it. Even if the waiter brings out
• 28:06
  the food and it looks fine, and even if it tastes OK, you are
• 28:10
  nervous taking that first bite. You have completely lost all
• 28:13
  confidence in the kitchen. The psychological impact of that
• 28:16
  is profound. The Brighter Path report points
• 28:20
  out that this production history acts as a factual public signal
• 28:24
  of distress. It's a red flag.
• 28:26
  It doesn't necessarily mean the final film is bad.
• 28:29
  The projected Rotten Tomatoes score for Supergirl is around
• 28:31
  76%, which is perfectly respectable.
• 28:34
  Yeah, that's a solid score. Craig Gillespie is a very
• 28:36
  talented director, but the narrative of a troubled
• 28:39
  production acts as a heavy anchor on presale urgency.
• 28:43
  Because it triggers the wait and see reflex and the consumer.
• 28:46
  Exactly when the casual audience hears a movie is undergoing
• 28:50
  massive reshoots, changing composers to alter the tone, and
• 28:54
  getting chopped up in the editing room, their immediate
• 28:57
  instinct is self preservation. They don't want to share money.
• 29:00
  They step back and say, you know what, I'll let someone else
• 29:02
  spend $20 to find out if it's a mess.
• 29:05
  So how does a studio market a movie when the Internet already
• 29:09
  has a play by play of their panic behind the scenes?
• 29:12
  How do you overcome that? It is incredibly difficult.
• 29:15
  You have to overwhelm that negative narrative with
• 29:18
  undeniable earth shattering creative assets.
• 29:21
  You have to distract them with how awesome it looks.
• 29:23
  You need a trailer so visually arresting and emotionally
• 29:26
  compelling that it makes people completely forget the drama.
• 29:31
  But as we established earlier, Supergirl's best marketing
• 29:34
  arrived way too late, and the early marketing was confusing
• 29:38
  corporate synergy. Makeup and the chicken.
• 29:40
  Right, so the narrative of the troubled production was allowed
• 29:43
  to fester unchallenged in the minds of the review sensitive
• 29:47
  general audience. And if you combine this
• 29:49
  production anxiety with the final two massive headwinds
• 29:54
  detailed in the report, you get a literal perfect storm for
• 29:58
  people deciding to just stay home.
• 29:59
  It's a daunting landscape. Let's look at what Brighter Path
• 30:02
  calls the ultimate headwinds. First up is the competition, a
• 30:06
  little movie called Toy Story 5. The competitive landscape is
• 30:09
  brutal right now, and Brighter Path classifieds Toy Story 5 as
• 30:13
  a very high risk headwind. Yeah, it opened to over 160
• 30:18
  million dollars, it set franchise preview records, and
• 30:21
  it is playing in its massive, dominant second weekend at the
• 30:25
  exact same time Supergirl's trying to launch.
• 30:27
  And the report points out a worst case scenario that is
• 30:30
  truly staggering. There was a real mathematical
• 30:33
  threat that Supergirl won't even debut at #1 at the box office.
• 30:36
  Wait, really? A brand new superhero movie
• 30:39
  opening at #2. Yes, if Toy Story 5 holds well,
• 30:42
  it could gross more in its second weekend than Supergirl
• 30:45
  does in its first. A scenario that the report notes
• 30:48
  would have been considered, quote, unthinkable just months
• 30:51
  ago. Unthinkable.
• 30:52
  And it's not just about the prestige of being number one,
• 30:55
  either. Toy Story 5 is physically
• 30:58
  stealing the premium screens. Which hurts the bottom line
• 31:01
  immensely. It is locking up IMAX and large
• 31:04
  format screens because families absolutely love those formats
• 31:07
  for Pixar movies. You are losing foot traffic.
• 31:10
  You are losing the media narrative of being the biggest
• 31:12
  movie in the world, and most importantly, you are losing
• 31:15
  those expensive ticket surcharges that pad the opening
• 31:18
  weekend gross. The economic impact of losing
• 31:22
  those PLF premium large format screens cannot be overstated.
• 31:26
  It's millions of dollars. But that leads directly into the
• 31:29
  second ultimate headwind, which Brighter Path classifieds as
• 31:33
  streaming deferral risk. This is the explicit wait for
• 31:36
  Max behavior. This is the data point that
• 31:39
  fascinates me the most because it's not a theoretical guess by
• 31:42
  a guy in a suit in a boardroom. The analysts at Brighter Path
• 31:46
  are literally scraping the comment sections on Deadline,
• 31:49
  Reddit and YouTube and they are seeing casual fans explicitly
• 31:52
  stating their intent. They are telling the studio
• 31:55
  exactly what they are going to do.
• 31:57
  They are literally typing I'll wait until August when it hits
• 32:00
  HBO Max. Audiences have long memories.
• 32:04
  They remember that The Flash and The Marvels were available on
• 32:07
  streaming platforms mere weeks after they bombed in theaters.
• 32:11
  We are witnessing the result of Pavlovian consumer training.
• 32:14
  I'll. Say more about that.
• 32:16
  During the pandemic and the years immediately following, the
• 32:19
  major studios trained audiences to expect massive $200 million
• 32:25
  theatrical films on their living room televisions in 45 days.
• 32:29
  They conditioned us. They rang the bell and they gave
• 32:32
  the audience the reward. Now they are trying to put the
• 32:34
  genie back in the bottle, but the audience is salivating for
• 32:37
  free content. They simply refuse to pay for
• 32:40
  the expensive theatrical meal when they know it will be free
• 32:42
  soon. And the Brighter Path model
• 32:44
  estimates that this Dreaming deferral behavior pulls 10 to
• 32:47
  15% of the potential domestic gross directly out of the
• 32:50
  theatrical. Window 10 to 15%.
• 32:53
  That is 10s of millions of dollars just evaporating from
• 32:56
  the box office ecosystem. It's severely compresses the
• 32:59
  film's total run and its multiplier, and it ties into a
• 33:02
  broader cultural shift that we often mislabel.
• 33:05
  We constantly call it superhero fatigue, but the report is very
• 33:10
  clear that it's more accurately superhero selectivity.
• 33:13
  The fatigue narrative is a myth. Totally a myth.
• 33:16
  If a movie looks like a true cultural event, like Deadpool
• 33:19
  and Wolverine or the new Spider Man, the audience will show up
• 33:22
  and break box office records. They are not tired of the genre
• 33:26
  itself. But they have become incredibly
• 33:28
  picky. Extremely selective.
• 33:30
  The post 2023 pattern is undeniable.
• 33:33
  Films featuring non A tier characters like Blue Beetle,
• 33:36
  Shazam 2, The Marvels and now potentially Supergirl, they face
• 33:40
  an immense, almost impenetrable wall of audience skepticism.
• 33:44
  Let's synthesize all of this data, because when you stack it
• 33:46
  all up, the slide from 55,000,000 down to 39 million
• 33:49
  makes perfect sense. It is a logical icon of the
• 33:51
  variables. You have an audience that is
• 33:54
  highly selective. You have a giant beloved Pixar
• 33:58
  movie stealing all the premium screens and family attention.
• 34:02
  You have an app on everyone's television that promises to
• 34:05
  deliver the movie for free in a month and 1/2 right.
• 34:07
  You have a movie starring at 25th ranked character.
• 34:12
  You have a public that watch the studio hack the movie to pieces
• 34:16
  in post production, and you have a marketing campaign that hid
• 34:20
  the best parts of the film behind a bucket of fried chicken
• 34:24
  until the very last minute. It's a comedy of errors.
• 34:26
  When you lay it out like that, why would the casual movie goer
• 34:29
  go to the theater? Mathematically, a massive
• 34:32
  portion of them won't. That is exactly why the tracking
• 34:35
  has fallen to that dangerous $39 million floor.
• 34:38
  Is there anything that can save it at this point?
• 34:40
  The only variable that can save the opening weekend now is if
• 34:44
  the core DC fans show up in absolute droves and the Momoa
• 34:48
  fans drive incredible unexpected walk up business on Saturday and
• 34:52
  Sunday. Which brings us to the final
• 34:54
  strategic takeaways from Chris Colombo and this Brighter Path
• 34:57
  Intelligence. We've spent all this time
• 35:00
  dissecting the data, looking at the broken funnels and the
• 35:03
  massive headwinds. What does Hollywood actually
• 35:05
  learn from this autopsy? There are a few critical
• 35:09
  structural lessons the industry must internalize.
• 35:12
  First, franchise momentum. Like the goodwill generated by
• 35:16
  James Gunn. Superman is a floor.
• 35:18
  It is not a ceiling. It gives you a base, but it
• 35:21
  doesn't give you a hit. It guarantees you won't open to
• 35:23
  0 because a certain segment of fans trust the brand, but it
• 35:27
  does not guarantee you a blockbuster.
• 35:29
  You have to earn the urgency on a movie by movie basis.
• 35:32
  Trust, but not urgency. Precisely Second, and perhaps
• 35:36
  most importantly, the economics of superhero filmmaking have to
• 35:39
  fundamentally change. Secondary characters cannot
• 35:42
  carry the financial burden of primary characters.
• 35:45
  Right. If you were making a movie about
• 35:46
  a hero ranked 25th in popularity, the production
• 35:49
  budget needs to be $100 million, not $175 million.
• 35:54
  The budget dictates the narrative.
• 35:56
  If Supergirl cost less to make, a $50 million opening would be
• 36:00
  celebrated across the industry as a solid, profitable base hit.
• 36:06
  It would be a success. It would be a great story.
• 36:08
  Instead, because of the bloated budget and the unfair
• 36:11
  comparisons to Superman, a $50 million opening is being
• 36:15
  scrutinized as a potential financial crisis.
• 36:18
  And finally, the film's strongest potential saving grace
• 36:21
  is something the data can't entirely predict its actual
• 36:24
  quality. Which is the ultimate wild card?
• 36:26
  If Craig Gillespie really delivered a visually stunning
• 36:29
  Mad Max in Space epic, and if Millie Alcock is truly as
• 36:33
  phenomenal as the test audiences say she is, word of mouth could
• 36:36
  save the movie's legs over the late summer.
• 36:38
  Reviews matter more now than ever for these secondary
• 36:41
  characters. The general audience is highly
• 36:43
  review sensitive. Really are.
• 36:45
  If the Rotten Tomatoes score drops into the 60's, the
• 36:48
  streaming deferral behavior accelerates dramatically and the
• 36:51
  box office collapses. But if the score holds in the
• 36:54
  high 70s or 80s and the audience score is strong, the film can
• 36:58
  grind out a respectable domestic total based purely on the
• 37:02
  strength of the theatrical experience.
• 37:04
  It is just wild to see the invisible machinery laid out
• 37:08
  like this. I mean, think about it every
• 37:10
  time you, the listener, Google a Showtime, but you don't actually
• 37:14
  buy a ticket. You're creating data.
• 37:16
  Every time you watch a TikTok fan edit of Millie Alcock but
• 37:19
  you scroll past the presale link.
• 37:20
  Every time you post a comment on Reddit saying I'll just wait for
• 37:23
  streaming, you are feeding directly into these brighter
• 37:26
  path demand models. You are the algorithm.
• 37:28
  The invisible hand of the box office isn't magic.
• 37:31
  It is just our collective data scraped, analyzed and weighted
• 37:34
  in real time. We are the headwinds and the
• 37:36
  tailwinds. It definitely removes some of
• 37:37
  the romance of the movie business, I admit, but it is the
• 37:41
  stark reality of how a multi billion dollar industry makes
• 37:45
  its decisions today. They aren't guessing, they are
• 37:48
  measuring us. Which leaves me with a final
• 37:50
  thought for you to ponder as we, the moviegoers, become more and
• 37:54
  more educated about the business of Hollywood.
• 37:56
  When we have real time access to the 10 test screenings, the
• 38:00
  three fired composers, the budget metrics, and the tracking
• 38:02
  data, are we losing the ability to just sit down in a dark room
• 38:07
  and dredge a movie as a piece of art?
• 38:09
  That's a great question. When we can see the cold hard
• 38:12
  math behind the curtain, does it permanently change the magic of
• 38:15
  the screen? Let that simmer.