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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
