Superman Falls Out of Streaming Top 10 for the First Time Since Its Debut, And the Reason Is Clear

When Superman took off in theaters this summer, it marked a major new point for Warner Bros. and DC Studios, cementing that their bet on a new cinematic universe had paid off. The James Gunn movie managed to have a successful run at the box office, bringing in over $350 million at the domestic box office and a global cumulative total over $615 million. A few months after its theatrical premiere in July, Superman made its streaming debut, arriving on HBO Max in September. Since then, the film has been among the Top 10 movies on Warner Bros. Discovery’s HBO Max, often #1, but now the last son of Krypton has taken a major hit.

On September 19th, Superman officially debuted on HBO Max, arriving ten weeks after the film’s theatrical release. As we’ve documented in the six weeks since that time, Superman has had a consistent place in the HBO Max Top 10, and has even rotated out of even the #1 spot in all of streaming. Last week, however, marked the end of October and the arrival of the Halloween holiday, and as a result, audiences decided that they weren’t interested in Superman for the time being.

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According to FlixPatrol’s streaming chart data, Superman officially fell out of the Top 10 on HBO Max in the United States on Wednesday, October 29th, and has been unable to climb back into that position ever since. The reason the film got pushed out isn’t entirely to do with a new movie making its way to streaming, though Zach Cregger’s Weapons did premiere and immediately take the top spot, but it has everything to do with the Halloween season. As the end of October arrived and spooky season reached its peak with the holiday itself, movie fans flocked to the horror genre.

As of this writing, Weapons remains the #1 movie on HBO Max, and has stayed there since it premiered a week ahead of Halloween. The rest of hte Top 10 is largely made up of horror movies as well, with 2017’s IT and 2019’s IT: Chapter Two taking the #2 and #3 spots on the charts. After that, there’s even more horror to be found with The Curse of the Necklace, The Substance, and Dreamcatcher, all filling out the next three slots. The rest of the top 10 includes a few other surprises, like 2017’s Life and the first two Harry Potter movies.

The descent of Superman doesn’t end there, though. According to FlixPatrol, which tracked the top streaming movies for the past week, Superman failed to crack the Top 10 across all streaming for just the second time since its arrival online. Weapons stayed at the top, the #1 movie on all of streaming, with Netflix’s A House of Dynamite the #2 title. Horror largely took over, though, with John Carpenter’s Halloween the #3 streaming movie for the past week. Other horror titles that climbed the charts include Sinners, The Black Phone, Bring Her Back, 28 Years Later, and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. In fact, the only other non-horror title to make the list was another Netflix original, Ballad of a Small Player.

So what does this shift for Superman mean in the grand scheme of things? In truth, not much, two major things were working against the movie to result in it not making the charts. The first is time, audiences always gravitate toward what is new and noteworthy and Superman had a great run of being in HBO Max’s Top 10 for weeks, a feat that most movies fail to manage. The second, of course, as noted, is that the season itself meant audiences had an appetite for a specific kind of movie that Superman didn’t satisfy. This trend will continue, and shouldn’t be seen as interest in the DCU waning or falling apart; it’s just how the cookie crumbles, and the same thing will happen as we approach Thanksgiving and an interest in Christmas movies begins to spike.