Could the future of DC now just be Superman and Batman movies, with the occasional cheaper “Elseworlds” offshoot, while everyone sits tight and waits for someone else to rebuild confidence?
If so, this is hardly the start that Gunn and his studio co-head Peter Safran would have wanted.
Will we ever see movies such as James Mangold’s Swamp Thing, or the proposed films based on Teen Titans, and Bane and Deathstroke?
Safran has said that nothing has changed post-Supergirl, but studio Warner Bros may see things differently if Supergirl really is on course to lose $100m.
And yet the bigger headache, oddly, could belong to Marvel.
Sony has already pretty much ruined any chance for characters such as Kraven the Hunter, Morbius or Madame Web to enter Spider-Man’s MCU world.
But if audiences simply switch off when superheroes other than the obvious big names get their own titles, how would that affect the climactic team-up movies that have made the studio billions at the box office?
Will anyone care if Shang-Chi steps up to strangle Doctor Doom in Secret Wars if the ring-wielding hero’s last solo movie came out six years previously?
There are already noticeably fewer comic book films in cinemas than there were just a few years ago, and former Disney CEO Bob Iger has indicated that the constant flurry of Disney+ spin-offs will also be reined in.
Moreover, the reduced quality of superhero movies generally will eventually damage the entire rickety machine.
Naysayers will no doubt rejoice.
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But it will be a sad irony if the very thing that made such films inspiring in the first place – the ability to see Spider-Man exchanging badinage with Iron Man and Thor in the middle of some vast, multiversal punch-up – ends up being what dooms the superhero cinematic universe era altogether.
