By Sarah Sluis
Watchmen was no 300. Expectations were high that Zack Snyder's new film would meet or exceed his 300's $70.8 million opening, but the weekend brought in $55.6 million for the comic book adaptation,
which has suffered from a general consensus of mediocrity. An avid comic book fan who turned out to see the movie on Saturday told me, "Snyder tried to make Watchmen like 300. The thing about Watchmen that made it different was that it was all about characters, and he made it all about action." Pan.
From a box-office perspective, the worst thing about Watchmen was not its sub-300 performance, but its drop-off over the weekend, which can be a sign of the movie's performance in weeks to come. On Friday (which included Thursday midnight screenings) it pulled in $25.1 million, then on Saturday it dropped 25% to $19 million, and on Sunday it dropped an additional 40% to $11.5 million. Comic book fans saw the movie, but they didn't recommend it to their friends. People that might see a comic book film that's highly recommended, like The Dark Knight, opted out of this one. Compared to Watchmen, 300 dropped off 12% on Saturday and 26% on Sunday. 300 only made $3 million more on its Friday debut than Watchmen, but it was able to hold its performance through the weekend.
I would not be surprised it Watchmen dropped over 50% next week. The surprisingly robust recession box office has sustained many films week-over-week, but it's also been brutal to a select few. This weekend, the only film to drop more than 50% was the Jonas Brothers movie, which plummeted 77%, indicating that the Jonas Brothers are so over, or that the target audience just wasn't deep enough. The brothers are no Hannah Montana.
Below Watchmen, the bottom nine films all did light business, earning between $2-8 million each. Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail came it at #2 with $8.8 million, followed by Taken at $7.4 million, which has benefited from word-of-mouth that the film is a solid ride. Slumdog Millionaire settled just below that at #4, doing $6.9 million in business. Besides kid pics Coraline and the Jonas Brothers, the rest of the top ten was filled with iterations of comedies. While Madea rode up top at #2, below that there were teen boy comedies Paul Blart: Mall Cop (#5) and Fired Up (#10), and female-skewing He's Just Not That Into You (#6) and Confessions of a Shopaholic (#8).
Next week another entry in the teen comedy genre, Miss March, opens in wide release, along with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's remake of Race to Witch Mountain (I'm still sentimental over my cable viewings of the 1975 version), and horror film The Last House on the Left.
No comments:
Post a Comment