DC Movies Tier List: All 28 Films Ranked (2026)

The Complete DC Movie Tier List

There are 28 modern DC movies: live-action theatrical superhero films released from Batman Begins in 2005 to Supergirl in June 2026. The best of them is The Dark Knight (2008) and the worst is Jonah Hex (2010), which holds 11% on Rotten Tomatoes against the 94% of the film at the top. That 83-point gap is the widest in any major franchise, and it is the reason a tier list works better here than a ranked list: DC is not one universe having good and bad years, it is five separate projects that mostly ignore each other.

Those five are the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight trilogy, a run of one-off adaptations with no shared universe behind them, the decade-long DCEU experiment, the standalone "Elseworlds" films like Joker and The Batman, and James Gunn's rebooted DCU. Here is our take, split into classic S/A/B/C/D tiers. Disagree? Good, settle it yourself in minutes with Shortlist.

Each film below also says where to watch it in the US, checked October 7, 2026 (JustWatch). Rights move, so those lines disappear rather than guess once that check is over three weeks old.

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How Many DC Movies Are There?

Twenty-eight, by the rule this page uses. Search for a DC ranking and you will be told 23, 27, 31 or something in the high thirties, and the reason is not that anyone is lying: it is that almost nobody states their rule. Ours is one sentence. A film is ranked here if it is a live-action theatrical film built on a DC Comics superhero and it came out in 2005 or later. That test produces 28. Here is what four other defensible rules produce instead, and why we did not use them.

The 2005 line is where the modern era starts, and it is a real break rather than a convenient one: Batman Begins arrived eight years after Batman & Robin closed the Burton and Schumacher run, and it reset what a DC film was allowed to be. Everything before it belongs to a different argument. If you want that one, our Batman movies tier list goes back to 1966.

Every DC Movie by Box Office, Budget and Return

DC's highest-grossing movie is Aquaman (2018), at $1.152B worldwide. Not The Dark Knight, which most people guess and which sits fourth here at $1.005B, behind The Dark Knight Rises and Joker as well. Only 4 DC films have passed a billion dollars. The 27 DC films with a theatrical release have grossed $13.281B worldwide against $4.653B in production budgets, a blended 2.85x.

That is 27 films and not 28, because Zack Snyder's Justice League has no box office at all. It premiered on HBO Max in March 2021 and never played cinemas, so it has no worldwide gross to report. Lists that rank DC films by money either drop it without saying so or print $0 beside it as though it had bombed. It is left out of the table and every total below, and it keeps its place in the tier list above, where the measure is the film rather than the receipts.

The biggest flop in DC movie history is Jonah Hex (2010): $10.5M worldwide on a $47.0M budget, a 0.22x return. Nothing else in the franchise is close, and it is the same film this page's FAQ names as the worst-reviewed, which almost never happens. 4 DC films in total failed to match their production budget in cinemas: Jonah Hex (0.22x), Supergirl (0.72x), Wonder Woman 1984 (0.85x), The Suicide Squad (0.91x). Two of those deserve their asterisk: Wonder Woman 1984 and The Suicide Squad both opened on HBO Max the same day they opened in cinemas, so the theatrical figure is not the whole of what they earned.

The best return in DC history is also the cheapest film on this table. Joker made $1.079B on a $55.0M budget, a 19.62x return, roughly 3 times what the franchise's biggest earner managed. And the pattern behind that is the whole DC story in one column: 12 of these 27 films came in under 2x, against 3 of 38 for the MCU on the same measure (see our Marvel movies tier list). DC's ceiling is as high as anyone's. Its floor is where the money went.

The Five DC Continuities, and What Each One Holds

Ranking Marvel means ranking one story told in order. Ranking DC means ranking five projects that were never meant to sit on the same shelf, three of which were running at the same time. This is the part most tier lists leave out, and it is the part that actually explains the shape of the ranking above: the two universes built to connect, the DCEU and the DCU, hold neither the best film here nor the worst.

The DCEU is more than half the list on its own, sixteen of the twenty-eight, and it is the reason DC's reputation swings so hard: the same continuity produced Wonder Woman and The Flash, and it did both inside ten years. The Dark Knight trilogy, which connects to none of it, still holds the top of the ranking twenty-one years after Batman Begins started it.

Where Supergirl Lands

Supergirl opened on June 26, 2026, directed by Craig Gillespie with Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El, and it is the second film of the rebooted DCU after Superman. It is placed in C tier here, and the placement is early on purpose.

The interesting thing about it is the split. It holds 52% on Rotten Tomatoes across 370 critic reviews and 73% with audiences (both read 2026-08-14), a 21-point gap in the audience's favour and the widest critic-to-audience spread of any film on this list. Theatrically it did not follow: $126.4M worldwide against a $175.0M production budget, a 0.72x return, and it reached digital on July 28, 2026, roughly a month after release. A film audiences liked more than critics did, that still did not find a theatrical audience, is a genuinely hard thing to tier.

So C tier is a reading of the split and the theatrical result together, not a verdict on staying power. S tier on this list means a film that lasted, and a film released in June 2026 has not had the time to demonstrate that. We will re-place it once the reception settles, the same way we handled The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

How to Build Your Own DC Movies Tier List

The card above builds one, and it shows why comparison beats rating: asked to score Man of Steel out of five you hedge, asked to pick it over Shazam! you answer immediately.

DC is the hard case, though, because it is 28 films spread across five separate continuities and a card of five cannot hold it. Shortlist can: add every DC film you have actually seen, tap through the matchups, and get one ranking that spans the Snyder films, the Burton films, the animated ones and the new DCU, with a share link for the group chat.

Read more about the comparison-based approach in our movie tier list guide.

Two different things get scored around this page. The S to D tiers above are editorial, and S means a film that held up rather than one that reviewed well on opening weekend. The score you see in the app is a different number: it is built from the head-to-head comparisons you make, scaled to 0 to 10, not from critic averages. How Shortlist scores work sets out the whole method.

This website uses TMDB and the TMDB APIs but is not endorsed, certified, or otherwise approved by TMDB.

DCEU vs. DCU: What's the Difference?

The DCEU (DC Extended Universe) ran from Man of Steel in 2013 to Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom in 2023, a shared continuity that included Henry Cavill's Superman, Ben Affleck's Batman, and Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman. It was never as tightly planned as Marvel's MCU, and a string of underperformers led Warner Bros. to reboot.

The DCU (DC Universe) is the fresh start, overseen by James Gunn and Peter Safran. It officially began with the animated series Creature Commandos and the 2025 film Superman. Films like Joker and The Batman sit outside both timelines as standalone "Elseworlds" stories, which is why a single DC tier list has to cut across all of it.

The Best DC Eras, Ranked

• The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005-2012): Nolan's Batman is still the high-water mark for the entire genre.
• The Elseworlds Films: Joker and The Batman prove DC is at its best telling self-contained stories.
• Early DCEU (2013-2018): Wonder Woman and Aquaman were real bright spots.
• The New DCU (2025-present): still too early to call. Superman was a confident start and Supergirl was a wobble.
• Late DCEU (2020-2023): the rough years: WW1984, The Flash, and a string of flops.
• The one-offs (2006-2011): the bottom. Watchmen is the one worth defending; Superman Returns, Green Lantern and Jonah Hex are why DC spent the late 2000s with no plan at all.

Disagree with this order? You can build your own instead of reading ours. The DC tier list maker asks you to pick between two DC films at a time and hands back your personal ranking in about a minute, free and with no signup.

DC Tier List FAQ

What is the best DC movie of all time?

Critics and fans almost universally put The Dark Knight (2008) at #1: it's frequently named the best comic book movie ever made. The Batman (2022) and Joker (2019) round out most modern top threes.

What is the worst DC movie?

By critic score it is Jonah Hex (2010), which holds 11% on Rotten Tomatoes across 152 reviews, 14 points below the next worst, Green Lantern (2011) at 25%. Both scores read 2026-08-14. Among the films fans argue about, the late-DCEU stretch takes the most heat: Wonder Woman 1984, the theatrical cut of Justice League, and the 2016 Suicide Squad.

How many DC movies are there?

There are 28 modern DC movies, counting live-action theatrical superhero films released from Batman Begins (2005) to Supergirl (2026). Other rules give other numbers: 27 if you treat Zack Snyder's Justice League as a re-cut rather than its own film, and 31 if you add either the theatrical animated films or the non-superhero DC imprint adaptations.

Is Supergirl part of the DCU?

Yes. Supergirl (2026), directed by Craig Gillespie and starring Milly Alcock, is the second film of the DC Universe that James Gunn and Peter Safran launched with Superman in 2025. It is not connected to the DCEU films that ran from 2013 to 2023.

Do I include the Dark Knight trilogy in a DC ranking?

Yes. Even though Nolan's trilogy isn't part of the DCEU or DCU continuity, it's still DC, and leaving The Dark Knight off a DC tier list would be strange. If you want to rank Nolan's work specifically, see our Christopher Nolan movies ranked tier list.

What is DC's most popular movie?

By worldwide box office it is Aquaman (2018), at $1.152B. That surprises most people, who guess The Dark Knight: it sits fourth at $1.005B, behind The Dark Knight Rises and Joker as well. Only 4 DC films have passed a billion dollars. Figures read from the TMDB API on 2026-09-01.

What is the biggest flop in DC movie history?

Jonah Hex (2010), which took $10.5M worldwide against a $47.0M budget, a 0.22x return. Nothing else in the franchise is close, and it is also the worst-reviewed DC film at 11% on Rotten Tomatoes. 4 of the 27 DC films with a theatrical release failed to match their budget in cinemas, though two of those, Wonder Woman 1984 and The Suicide Squad, opened on HBO Max the same day they opened in cinemas.

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