Box-Office Wrap-Up: Mar. 6 – Mar. 8, 2009
Whether or not the movie was good or bad... it's bad box-office news for Watchmen.
Wow. That's a beating for Watchmen. $55m would be a nice opening… if the movie wasn't sporting a $200m budget (I'm guessing here but it sounds about right). The other crazy story was how little everything else made. Let's get into this one.
#1 movie predicted correctly: 1 Week In A Row
After Friday night projections were initially $65m. Then those projections were scaled down to $60m. Now it's $56m. I'm thinking if this keeps up we'll find out on Tuesday that only a few dozen people saw it.
Now, regardless of what you think of the film itself the financial prospects are dim. It opened below Twilight and Fantastic Four. No bueno. It's going to have to scramble to hit $200m domestically and the darker fare doesn't usually attract international audiences as well. Take Dark Knight for instance. It only made $15m in Japan, where Spider-Man cleared $50m.
Now then, if we give Watchmen $180m plus another $140m internationally that's $320m. The production budget had to be around $150m, throw in another $50m for marketing. Which means Watchmen needs to hit half a billion to start thinking about a profit due to studio and theater splits. And I haven't even mentioned whatever FOX is getting out of this deal. Regardless of how this was spun, they really needed it to open better considering 300 had only 40% of the costs… and opened way higher.
Result: 55.6 million (My rank: #1, $32.9m off)
And then there was everything else. Nothing else even hit $9 million and it was the third worst box-office weekend of the year.
Result: 8.8 million (My rank: #2, $1.1m off)
Man, if it weren't for that pesky $30m variance at the top I'd really be on a roll.
Result: 7.4 million (My rank: #3, $0.7m off)
Slumdog will be out of the top ten in two weeks. Until then, I need all of you to think up interesting things to say about it.
Result: 6.9 million (My rank: #4, $1m off)
If you're looking for a profitable movie try this one on for size. It's at five times its production budget. Sony is dancing on the ceiling.
Result: 4.2 million (My rank: #6, $.3m off)
This one stands at $124m. As all the stars took less than adequate money we'll call this one a winner too.
Result: 4.0 million (My rank: #7, $.3m off)
It doesn't hit Denmark, Russia, and Czech Republic for a few months. So all is not lost.
Result: 3.3 million (My rank: #10, $.7m off)
This title feels a lot like stealing. If they'd only released a movie or two in the last four weeks this would be long gone. As it stands it's simply making dollars by default.
Result: 3.1 million (My rank: #8, $0.1m off)
77.7% drop. The kids are fickle, and they've shouted from the rooftops on this title. They don't care. Now if Zack and Cody release a film… we can talk.
Result: 2.7 million (My rank: #5, $2.8m off)
I nailed the dollars, but my order was all off. That, plus the Watchmen debacle is going to lead to some serious soul searching out of me.
Result: 2.6 million (My rank: #9, $.0m off)
So who you got next weekend? Watchmen should be in the upper $20s. Will Witch Mountain have enough to dethrone it? Maybe The Last House on the Left remake? Should be interesting. Tune in Thursday afternoon for more award-winning predictions!
There is no way word of mouth from the general public could help this. The only ones who liked it are fans, everyone who hasn't read the book (that I have talked to at least), has hated it.
yeah the only people who liked it were the comic fans, although I liked it too. It will probably crash big time next week, unless all those fans manage repeat viewings.
Can I toot my own horn Laremy? I called it, I knew it was gonna fall short of expectations!! Not that I'm happy about that, since I liked the movie and all.
Yeah, word of mouth will be pretty bad; It'll drop (i think) like "The Incredible Hulk" from last year and make around $130-140 million when it's out of theaters.
Next weekend though, it'll barely take the throne (mostly by default). "Witch Mountain" will come in at low 20s, "Last House" will open somewhere at mid-to-high teens, while "Miss March" (which I really want to see since it's Zack and Trevor from WKUK) will open to sub-5 million.
First, I want to say I loved the movie and only have lukewarm support for the book. With that said, who is to blame for this? When you consider the media hype (not to mention the free publicity coming from the Fox-Warner war over the book rights) this movie should have opened north of 70 million. Fault for this debacle has to be put squarely at the feet of Warner Bros marketing department which tried to sell the movie as a dark superhero movie like The Dark Knight made by the guy who did 300. I went to see this with 13 people last night and the group was divided into four fans of the book; three who were familiar with the book, but never read it; two comic book fans and the rest were fans of "superhero movies." Guess who in the group loved it and who hated it? WB's marketing has left a lot of moviegoers feeling lied to because they were presented a vision of the movie to which the story couldn't live up. Warner Bros has no one to blame but themselves.
Plus let's add (I did not see the movie) people like "Movie Mom" saying this is a "near NC-17-level" movie. That had to scare people off. Who wants to see a "Saw" movie for two and a half hours plus.
Officialy Watchmen had a budget of 150 mill, so with the whole 50 mill advertising thing that makes 200 mill. Watchmen might get lucky and pay off that budget, but right now Snyder should probably be looking to his next 2 projects to make up for this.
Zack Snyder said in a recent interview that the movie was made for a "lot less" than the $150 million figure people are citing. So, who knows? It's a great, thrilling, ride that's not your typical mainstream fare. That makes what happens next unpredictable.
Watchmen will have a "word of mouth" effect like Taken did. This title will garner more and more money as time goes by.
Well if they decide to blame the R rating then this means that Terminator Salvation might get knocked down to a PG-13.
175mil domestic for Watchmen at best, realistically, I see it around 135-150mil. Here's hoping Watchmen manages a semblance of the legs that Taken has on the box office. It was a good but not great imho. It was a pretty solid effort to adapt an exemplary graphic novel that in all honestly could never be done total justice on the big screen. On a side note, I'm happy for Liam Neeson that Taken is doing so well.
Laremy, you're way too quick to brand a new movie as a failure. Back when "Benjamin Button' was dominating the top 10, you kept saying its gross would be alright, except that the budget was so high, and that the studios must be really disappointed with it now. Well, with Paramount getting 55% of domestic grosses and 35-50% overseas grosses (though closer to 50, since it's one of the bigger studios), Benjamin Button is now in the green, even before the DVD release!
The same is happening now. You are not seeing the big picture. Yes, Watchmen didn't do as well as we expected. Yes, the overseas weren't amazing. But if we look at it realistically, Watchmen was did EXTREMELY well. It was a 2 hour 43 minute movie with more philosophical dialogue than action. It was morally ambiguous. It didn't have the kind of name recognition that Batman and Superman and Spider-man had. It was dark, brooding, and violent, and very much R-rated. For any other superhero movie, that would have spelled death at the box office and no more than a $10-20 million opening.
By the way, I do not at all believe it cost $200 million to produce. Back in the autumn, all credible sources were saying Watchmen cost $100 million to produce. Around the time of the lawsuit, they said $110 million. And, up until a day or two before the release, nobody was saying higher than $120 million. But then when everyone realized "Watchmen" wasn't breaking the records people were hoping it would break, they pounced on it and yelled: "$150 million! $200 million!" The sad fact is that people love it when a movie doesn't meet expectations, even if those expectations are unrealistic. Watchmen had a first weekend to be proud of. And even if it doesn't make all its money back in theaters, it's more than going to make it back on DVD. After all, only 1/4 of the profits come from theaters. Remember that before you're so quick to label another movie a failure.