SUPERGIRL BOX OFFICE COLLAPSES LIKE ROME, EXCEPT ROME HAD BETTER REVIEWS

It is with a heavy heart and an even heavier mustache that I report the fall of what analysts are calling a superhero movie, and historians are already calling 'a cautionary tale we will teach for generations, right after the fall of Constantinople.' Supergirl soared into theaters, discovered gravity, and landed at $125 million worldwide against a budget somewhere between 'a small aircraft carrier' and 'an aircraft carrier with notes.' A tragedy on the scale of the Roman Empire, if the Roman Empire had a 52% Tomatometer score and a memorable third act it forgot to include.

Warner Discovery convened an emergency closed-door 'synergy autopsy' Tuesday, concluding after six hours that the film underperformed not because of pacing, tone, or a script that critics describe as 'dutifully assembled from other, better scripts,' but because American audiences simply did not arrive with sufficient belief in Kryptonian real estate. 'This wasn't underperformance,' explained Dale Corbett of the Warner Discovery Synergy Division, adjusting a lanyard that appeared to have three separate corporate logos ironed onto it. 'It was a pre-planned narrative contraction to optimize future streaming regret. We modeled for this. We wanted this. Please stop asking about this.'

Milly Alcock, for her part, is being universally praised as the single structural beam holding up a house that critics agree was otherwise on fire, which is either a ringing endorsement or the saddest sentence ever written about a $180 million motion picture. Ron Rugundy, gripping his anchor desk with both hands like a man steadying himself against turbulence only he can feel, delivered the verdict live: 'Milly Alcock flew. The script did not. I'm not going to sugarcoat this. I don't know how. I only know how to deliver bad news in a deep, trustworthy voice, and tonight, ladies and gentlemen, that voice is very, very tired.'