Hollywood keeps making the same mistake, and nobody in charge seems to care.
The star of the new DC superhero film just went out of her way to insult the very audience she needs to buy tickets.
And now the early box office tracking numbers are raising some very uncomfortable questions for the studio.
What She Actually Said
Milly Alcock, the Australian actress tapped to play Supergirl in DC Studios’ upcoming film set for June 26, sat down with Variety for a cover story and said something that a lot of paying customers are not going to forget.
When the subject of online critics came up, Alcock did not hold back.
“And it’s from a lot of people whose profiles have no photo, who are burner accounts,” Alcock told Variety. “Or someone’s name and then ‘Dad of four, Christian,’ which is hilarious to me. But I mean, whose opinion do you really care about? If you’re p—ing the right kind of people off, you’re doing OK.”
Read that again slowly. The lead actress of a $200 million superhero movie just told the world that Christian fathers are the kind of people worth alienating.
Those are the men who take their kids to summer blockbusters. Those are the families who fill seats on opening weekend. Those are the people the studio needs walking through the door on June 26.
The Studio Cheered Her On
DC Studios co-chairman Peter Safran knew about the controversy and called Alcock personally after an earlier round of backlash.
His response? Encouragement.
“I called her and just said, ‘You’re doing great! You’re handling it beautifully. You’re never going to make everybody happy. Just be true to yourself,'” Safran told Variety.
So the man responsible for a $200 million film looked at his lead actress burning bridges with a core segment of the moviegoing public and told her she was doing beautifully. That is the institutional mindset running DC Studios right now.
And it gets worse. The Variety piece itself framed audience critics as “trolls and incels,” while the magazine positioned Alcock as heroically defiant. The actress and the trade press are completely aligned in their contempt for the people they need to reach.
This Is Not the First Time She Stirred the Pot
The Variety interview was not Alcock’s first rodeo with fan controversy. Back in March, she gave an interview to Vanity Fair where she said that audiences “have become very comfortable having this weird ownership of women’s bodies,” a comment that drew immediate backlash.
When critics pushed back and suggested she was targeting men specifically, Alcock dismissed the reaction entirely.
“I didn’t even say ‘men’ — I said ‘people!'” she told Variety. “And they got so angry. I was like, ‘You’re proving my point. You’re proving my point!'”
That is a neat trick. Say something that upsets people, then point to the upset as proof you were right. It is a way of making sure no criticism can ever land.
But here is the thing. The people getting upset are not trolls. They are ticket buyers. And they remember.
The Numbers Do Not Lie
Early tracking has the film’s awareness score at 53 and interest at 48. For a franchise reboot with this level of corporate investment, those are not encouraging numbers.
The predecessor film, Superman, pulled in roughly $600 million worldwide. Variety itself described that as “a promising beginning, but not a home run.” So the bar coming into Supergirl was already set at a level that required broad audience appeal, not audience division.
And Alcock’s camp keeps invoking Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel as proof that audiences will show up for female-led superhero films. But that comparison cuts in more than one direction. Wonder Woman worked because Gal Gadot played the character with warmth and wide appeal. Captain Marvel was divisive, and its sequel bombed. The precedent is not as clean as Hollywood wants it to be.
Hollywood Never Learns
This is a pattern, not an accident. Disney went through the exact same cycle with Rachel Zegler ahead of Snow White. Zegler spent months antagonizing longtime fans of the original film, dismissing their concerns, and framing criticism as evidence of audience toxicity. The film underperformed.
Marvel faced a version of this during the Captain Marvel era when Brie Larson’s public comments became a constant source of controversy and division.
Studios keep watching this play out, and they keep doing it anyway. At some point you have to ask whether the people making these decisions actually want the films to succeed or whether they have decided that cultural signaling matters more than ticket sales.
Disney’s Snow White turned into one of the biggest bombs of all time when star Rachel Ziegler couldn’t stop blabbering about how woke she was amd how racist and sexist the source material was.
Because insulting Christian fathers two months before your opening weekend is not a marketing strategy. It is a warning sign.
The families Alcock finds so hilarious are the ones who made superhero movies a $20 billion industry. They built the audience that made franchises like this possible. And they are perfectly capable of spending their summer somewhere else.
Alcock admitted in the same Variety interview that she is scared about how the film will be received.
“Of course I’m scared,” she said. “Of course, I want people to like me and the movie. But, ultimately, it’s out of my control.”
But some of it was in her control. And she made her choice.
June 26 is coming fast. The box office will have the final word, and no amount of Variety cover stories will change what the numbers say on opening weekend.
Sources: Fox News, Variety, Geeks and Gamers, FandomPulse, PrimeTimer