Superman sees the good in people. Supergirl sees the truth.
That single line of dialogue from the first Supergirl teaser trailer — spoken by Milly Alcock with a quiet, bone-dry conviction that stops the frame cold — tells you everything you need to know about how different this film intends to be. The DC Universe’s second theatrical release is not a sequel to Superman. It is not a companion piece. It is, in every meaningful way, its own animal: darker, wilder, more emotionally raw, and driven by a version of Kara Zor-El that the character’s six-decade history in comics and film has rarely dared to show.
Supergirl opens in theaters on June 26, 2026 — less than a year after David Corenswet’s Superman debuted to enormous acclaim in July 2025 and proved that James Gunn’s ambitious reset of the DC Universe was more than a promise. The speed of the follow-up is itself a statement. Gunn and his co-CEO Peter Safran are not easing into their new shared universe. They are building it with urgency, confidence, and — if Supergirl delivers on its considerable promise — a willingness to take chances that DC has not shown in years.
The film is directed by Craig Gillespie, written by Ana Nogueira, produced by Gunn and Safran, and adapted from one of the most acclaimed superhero comics published in the last decade. It stars Milly Alcock in the title role, alongside a cast that includes Jason Momoa, Matthias Schoenaerts, Eve Ridley, Emily Beecham, and David Krumholtz. It was filmed at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in England and on location in Scotland, with a score by Ramin Djawadi. It has already passed two test screenings with strong internal reactions. And it is, for all the right reasons, the superhero film most likely to surprise you this summer.
SUPERGIRL IN THE DCU: HOW WE GOT HERE
A Supergirl film has been circling the DC universe in various forms since 2018, when a standalone project was first announced as part of the then-current DC Extended Universe. The character appeared briefly in The Flash (2023), played by Sasha Calle, but those plans were scrapped when Gunn and Safran were appointed co-CEOs of DC Studios in October 2022 and set about rebuilding the entire cinematic slate from scratch.
In January 2023, Gunn announced the new Supergirl project — this time as an adaptation of Tom King’s acclaimed 2021 comic miniseries Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. The choice was significant. Woman of Tomorrow is not a conventional superhero origin story. It is a character study, a space western, a meditation on trauma and purpose and the terrible cost of violence. Gunn called it a “beautiful, star-spanning tale” and said Nogueira’s script was so strong that it prompted him to move Supergirl up in the release schedule, making it the second DCU film rather than a later entry. That is not a small thing. It means Gunn believes in this story enough to entrust the entire fledgling universe’s second chapter to it.
Ana Nogueira was confirmed as screenwriter in November 2023 — a return engagement, since she had been attached to an earlier Supergirl project before the Gunn era began. Her work impressed the new leadership so much that she was given an overall writing deal with DC. Craig Gillespie — the director of I, Tonya and Cruella, both films distinguished by their commitment to complex, difficult female protagonists — joined the project in May 2024. His involvement immediately signalled the kind of film this would be: not a straightforward crowd-pleaser, but something with edges.
By January 2024, the search for Kara Zor-El was underway. Milly Alcock, Emilia Jones, Cailee Spaeny, and Meg Donnelly were among those considered. When Alcock was cast, the decision felt both surprising and, in retrospect, inevitable. She had made an indelible impression as young Rhaenyra Targaryen in House of the Dragon, delivering a performance of extraordinary depth and ferocity. She was precisely what Gunn needed: an actor capable of playing a superhero who is also, genuinely, a mess.
WHO IS THIS SUPERGIRL? NOT THE ONE YOU THINK
Every previous screen version of Supergirl has been built around a specific emotional template: the optimistic, fish-out-of-water hero who finds her footing on Earth and becomes, through goodness and determination, something greater than her grief. Helen Slater’s Kara in the 1984 film. Melissa Benoist’s beloved Kara Danvers across seven seasons of The CW series. Even animated versions tend toward warmth and hopefulness.
Milly Alcock’s Kara Zor-El is something different. She is, when we meet her, drinking in a dive bar on a planet without a yellow sun — deliberately stripping herself of her powers so she can get drunk, which is the only way to escape what is inside her head. She has watched an entire planet die. She has carried survivor’s guilt for decades. She was sent to Earth specifically to protect her baby cousin, Kal-El — and by the time her escape pod arrived, he had already grown up, been raised by loving parents, and become Superman without her. Her entire purpose, the reason she survived, was taken from her by the mechanics of space-time. She sees “the truth,” she says. Not the good. The truth.
Director Craig Gillespie has described the film as an “anti-hero story,” saying Kara has “demons and a lot of baggage.” James Gunn has been equally explicit about his intentions, noting that “so many times female superheroes are so perfect” and that this Supergirl is something far more complicated. The film is not about Kara finding her place on Earth. It is about Kara — adrift in space, furious and aching — finding a reason to be a hero at all.
Alcock herself has spoken candidly about the weight of the role. In an interview with Forbes, she described the moment she was confirmed for the part: “I thought, ‘What have I done?’ I really struggled to believe I could do it. I even called the director, saying, ‘I don’t know how to be that person.’” That vulnerability, worn honestly, is exactly what this version of Kara requires.
“So many times female superheroes are so perfect. This Supergirl is something far more complicated. She has demons, and a lot of baggage. — Craig Gillespie & James Gunn”
THE SOURCE MATERIAL: SUPERGIRL: WOMAN OF TOMORROW
To understand where the film is headed, you need to know the comic that inspired it. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is an eight-issue miniseries written by Tom King with art by Bilquis Evely and colors by Mat Lopes, published by DC Comics between 2021 and 2022. It was a finalist for the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story, won widespread critical acclaim, and was named one of the New York Public Library’s Best Books for Adults in 2022. James Gunn named it as a direct influence on the Gods and Monsters chapter of his DC Universe.
The story, as King himself has described it, is his version of True Grit — the classic Western in which a young girl hires a grizzled, morally compromised marshal to track her father’s killer across dangerous territory. In Woman of Tomorrow, the young girl is Ruthye Marye Knoll, an alien child whose father has been murdered by a hired killer named Krem of the Yellow Hills. The marshal is Kara Zor-El: not a shining hero, but a survivor with extraordinary gifts and a deeply complicated relationship to using them.
The series opens with Kara on her 23rd birthday, drinking in a bar at the edge of the universe on a planet without a yellow sun. Ruthye approaches her. Kara, initially reluctant, agrees to help. What follows is a star-spanning journey: Kara and Ruthye travel from world to world, always a few steps behind Krem and the murderous Brigands he has joined, always arriving to find the aftermath of violence they were too late to prevent. The journey transforms both of them in ways that King traces with quiet precision.
What makes Woman of Tomorrow exceptional — and what makes it the right source material for a film that wants to do something new with the character — is its willingness to sit with Kara’s pain without resolving it cheaply. Kara is not healed by the story. She is changed by it. The difference between those two things is the difference between a conventional superhero narrative and something genuinely literary. As Polygon’s Susana Polo wrote, it applies “Sandman vibes to space adventure starring Supergirl” — and that tone, if the film captures it, will be unlike anything in the current superhero landscape.
⭐ Read Before You Watch: Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (2021)
Written by Tom King with art by Bilquis Evely — available now as a trade paperback collecting all 8 issues. Hugo Award finalist, NYPL Best Book for Adults 2022, and the direct source material for the 2026 film. King describes it as the comic he always wanted to make, and the one he’d recommend to anyone new to comics. If you want to understand who Milly Alcock’s Kara is, start here.
FULL CAST OF SUPERGIRL 2026: EVERY MAJOR ROLE
Milly Alcock leads the film as Kara Zor-El / Supergirl. Her preparation for the role involved six months of intensive stunt training and wire work — physical preparation that speaks to the film’s commitment to practical action over digital shorthand. Alcock beat out a reported field of hundreds of actresses during a lengthy process that included chemistry reads with David Corenswet’s Superman. The result is an actress who arrives at this role not as a legacy casting decision but as the person who earned it.
Eve Ridley plays Ruthye Marye Knoll, Kara’s reluctant companion and, in the source comic, the story’s narrator. In Woman of Tomorrow, Ruthye is not a sidekick — she is, in many ways, the moral centre of the story, an alien child whose grief and determination force Kara to confront her own. Ridley, previously known for The Witcher and 3 Body Problem, takes on her most prominent film role to date. Her chemistry with Alcock will be, in many ways, the film’s emotional engine.
Matthias Schoenaerts, the Belgian actor known for his intense, physically commanding performances in Rust and Bone and Far from the Madding Crowd, plays Krem of the Yellow Hills — the film’s primary villain and the man responsible for Ruthye’s father’s death. Krem is not a world-ending megalomaniac. He is something more unsettling: a petty, cruel killer for hire who has joined a group of Brigands that roam the galaxy dispensing violence for profit. His menace is intimate rather than cosmic.
Jason Momoa appears as Lobo — and this is where the film’s fan community has been most excited. Momoa is one of the few actors working today whose physical presence and natural charisma match the sheer excess of the character, an immortal, unkillable, foul-mouthed intergalactic bounty hunter known as the Main Man. In the source comic, Lobo plays a role analogous to Rooster Cogburn in True Grit — a morally questionable hired gun whose relationship with Kara is combative, darkly funny, and ultimately meaningful. Momoa has confirmed the casting himself, noting that he originally joined the DC universe years ago believing he was being cast as Lobo — and has finally gotten his wish.
David Krumholtz and Emily Beecham play Zor-El and Alura In-Ze, Kara’s parents — roles that will almost certainly appear in flashbacks, given that both characters perished with Krypton. David Corenswet is expected to appear in a brief cameo as Superman / Kal-El, continuing the DCU’s interconnected storytelling. Ramin Djawadi — the composer behind Game of Thrones and Westworld — scores the film, bringing his signature blend of electronic and orchestral texture to Kara’s world.
PRODUCTION: FILMING AT LEAVESDEN AND ON LOCATION IN SCOTLAND
Principal photography ran from January to May 2025, based primarily at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden — the legendary facility outside London that served as the home of the Harry Potter films and has hosted productions including the Fantastic Beasts series, several MCU and DCU entries, and countless prestige British productions. Location shooting extended to London itself and to Scotland, which provided the kind of atmospheric, rugged landscapes that the source comic’s alien worlds demand.
The production team was assembled with the same care as the cast. Tatiana S. Riegel, a frequent Gillespie collaborator who served as an additional editor on James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023), handles editing — a connection that adds a layer of creative continuity between the two Gunn-produced projects. Geoffrey Baumann serves as visual effects supervisor, with a brief that appears to prioritize practical environments supplemented by digital enhancement rather than wall-to-wall CGI.
By June 2025, Gunn announced that the original subtitle — Woman of Tomorrow — had been dropped in favour of the single word Supergirl. The decision reflected Gunn’s well-documented dislike of subtitle-heavy film names, but it also signals something about the film’s confidence: this story doesn’t need qualification. The character stands alone.
Two test screenings occurred before the film’s marketing campaign began in earnest. The first was a quiet internal screening at Warner Bros.’ Burbank lot in October 2025. The second, during the week of December 15, 2025, generated significant internal excitement — with reports specifically praising Milly Alcock’s performance and noting that the film features several well-chosen needle drops in the tradition of Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy films. Early reactions described the tone as nothing like what audiences would expect from a Supergirl film, which is precisely the point.
“Early test screening reactions praised Milly Alcock’s performance and described the tone as nothing like what audiences would expect from a Supergirl film. That is precisely the point.”
SUPERGIRL VS SUPERMAN: TWO COUSINS, TWO VERY DIFFERENT FILMS
James Gunn’s Superman (2025) was, by every measure, the film that stabilized and re-energised the DC Universe. It was bright, hopeful, emotionally generous, and built around a version of Clark Kent that wore his goodness not as a cliché but as a genuine and hard-won choice. It grossed over a billion dollars worldwide and restored audience trust in DC’s ability to deliver.
Supergirl is, deliberately, everything Superman is not — in tone, in emotional register, and in what it asks of its central character. Superman sees the good in people. Supergirl sees the truth. Where Clark was raised by loving parents on a planet that welcomed him, Kara watched her world die and arrived too late to fulfil her purpose. Where Clark’s powers are a gift freely given, Kara’s are a burden she sometimes strips away so she can feel like a person rather than a weapon.
The pairing of these two films is, whether intentional or not, a brilliant piece of franchise architecture. Superman establishes the universe’s moral compass. Supergirl interrogates it. If you want to understand what the DCU believes about heroism, you watch both films side by side: one shows you the ideal, and the other shows you the cost of living under it.
That dynamic is made explicit in the moment of Kara’s brief Superman cameo at the end of the 2025 film. She arrives, hungover, to collect Krypto the Superdog, delivers a parting shot to her cousin, and leaves. It is a scene of roughly ninety seconds that prompted more speculation and excitement than many full trailers. Everything about it — Alcock’s physicality, her timing, her evident contempt for being seen through her cousin’s lens — established a character that audiences immediately wanted to know more about.
WHY SUPERGIRL 2026 COULD BE THE SUPERHERO FILM OF THE SUMMER
The superhero genre, after a decade of formula-heavy fatigue, has been seeking a new direction. Gunn’s Superman showed that returning to character fundamentals — asking what a hero actually believes, and why — could reinvigorate a tired genre. Supergirl takes that impulse further. It asks what happens to a hero who doesn’t have a settled answer. Who has the powers and the legacy and the cosmic responsibility, but hasn’t found the reason.
Craig Gillespie is the ideal director for this material. His two most celebrated films — I, Tonya (2017) and Cruella (2021) — are both studies of women who exist outside polite expectation: fierce, flawed, capable of tremendous damage and tremendous feeling, shaped by circumstances that conventional heroism would simplify into something unrecognizable. Tonya Harding. Cruella de Vil. And now Kara Zor-El. There is a line through all three, and it runs directly into the kind of superhero film audiences have been asking for without knowing the name of what they wanted.
The casting of Milly Alcock makes that ambition credible. She is 25 years old. She has never led a major theatrical film. And based on every available piece of evidence — the test screenings, the trailers, her own account of the preparation she put into the role — she is ready. House of the Dragon gave her a global stage. Supergirl will give her a franchise. More importantly, if she pulls this off, it will give the character of Kara Zor-El the definitive screen portrayal she has never had.
The film opens on June 26, 2026. One week after Toy Story 5. One week before Minions 3. It is a crowded summer. But Supergirl is not competing for the same audience. It is its own thing: a space western, a character study, an anti-hero story wearing a cape. The sky has never looked more interesting.
Supergirl opens exclusively in theaters and IMAX on June 26, 2026, from Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Studios. The source comic, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely, is available now in paperback and digital formats.
All production details and cast information are current as of March 21, 2026. Subject to change.
Key Takeaways
- Supergirl 2026, directed by Craig Gillespie, offers a darker and more emotionally complex portrayal of Kara Zor-El compared to previous versions.
- The film adapts Tom King’s acclaimed comic series Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, focusing on Kara’s trauma and complicated journey.
- Milly Alcock stars as Supergirl, bringing a raw and nuanced performance shaped by her character’s struggles and vulnerabilities.
- Set for release on June 26, 2026, the film distinguishes itself within the superhero genre by exploring deeper themes of heroism and identity.
- Supergirl 2026 contrasts with the optimistic tone of Superman, highlighting the costs and emotional impact of heroism in the DC Universe.
