After all the anticipation and hubbub, the weekend is coming to an end and the box office results are here: Watchmen (No. 1) grossed $55.7 million during its first frame, according to early estimates from Media by Numbers.
That's a solid sum, to be sure, although it's certainly on the low end of most projections. Watchmen premiered in more theaters (3,611) than any other R-rated movie in history, and it averaged an impressive $15,413 per venue, despite a potentially problematic long running time. It also scored the biggest debut of 2009 so far. Nonetheless, the movie's $55.7 mil take (including $5.5 mil from 124 IMAX screens) is substantially smaller than the $70.9 mil that 300, the last R-rated graphic-novel movie from director Zack Snyder, earned on its opening weekend two years ago. And aside from that theater-count statistic (which almost any film could break at any time, really), there will be no major records to report on this weekend (for example, Watchmen's debut was just the fifth-best opening ever for an R-rated movie).
I'd argue, in fact, that this opening is a bit soft, considering the great expectations that came with Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore's landmark comic book -- not to mention Watchmen's hefty grosses from screenings at midnight on Friday and throughout its first day. After attracting some major initial interest, banking $25.1 mil on Friday, the film's audience dropped off dramatically during the weekend: It grossed $19 mil on Saturday and is expected to bring in just $11.5 mil on Sunday. These are all big numbers, don't get me wrong, but, when combined with the fact that the film got a lukewarm CinemaScore grade of B from an audience that was largely comprised of older men, it all points to a rapid downward trend that may be difficult to reverse in the weeks to come.
Elsewhere -- yes, there were other movies playing at the multiplex this weekend! -- a number of films continued to do what Watchmen must now aspire to, perhaps in vain: They stayed strong deep into their long runs. Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail (No. 2) grossed $8.8 mil on its third weekend; the film, Perry's biggest yet at the box office, has banked $76.5 mil to date. Taken (No. 3) also moved along like the unstoppable force it has been for more than a month now, earning $7.5 mil and bringing its six-week sum to $118 mil. Best Picture winner Slumdog Millionaire (No. 4) was next with $6.9 mil, which boosted its domestic haul to $125.4 mil. And Paul Blart: Mall Cop (No. 5) took its eight-week total to $133.6 mil thanks to another $4.2 mil gross.
Meanwhile, Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience (No. 9) completely fell off the map, dropping a staggering 78 percent to gross just $2.8 mil. According to Box Office Mojo, that's the 15th biggest second-weekend decline of all time.
Overall, the cumulative box office was up nearly 8 percent over the same frame a year ago, when 10,000 B.C. opened big, making this the fifth consecutive "up" weekend at the multiplex. So, all in all, I'd say today's was a good report, indeed.
More Box Office News:
'Watchmen' earns $25.1 mil at the box office on Friday
'Watchmen' grosses $4.6 mil at midnight shows
Box Office Preview: 'Watchmen' will be No. 1, but how much will it make?
'Madea' tops 'Jonas Brothers' for a second box office win
'Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail' wins big at the box office
'Friday the 13th' slashes records
EW.com's Box Office Chart
Friday's box office estimates are in, and Watchmen walked away with a hefty $25.1 million gross on its first full day of release, according to Media by Numbers. That sum is pretty much in line with expectations, and it portends an opening-weekend haul exceeding $60 mil.
Director Zack Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore's landmark comic kicked off its freshman frame with a $4.6 mil take from screenings that started on Friday at midnight; that initial figure is included in the full day's $25.1 mil total. By comparison, on its opening weekend, Snyder's previous R-rated graphic-novel adaptation, 300, earned $2.5 mil in Friday midnight shows, but it banked an even more impressive $28.1 mil on its first full day, en route to a $70.9 mil debut.
Friday's box office rankings, including the other top contenders at the multiplex, are below, and please check back here on Sunday for a full weekend recap in the Box Office Report.
1. Watchmen -- $25.1 mil
2. Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail -- $2.6 mil
3. Taken -- $2.3 mil
4. Slumdog Millionaire -- $2 mil
5. He's Just Not That Into You -- $1.4 mil
More Box Office News:
'Watchmen' grosses $4.6 mil at midnight shows
Box Office Preview: 'Watchmen' will be No. 1, but how much will it make?
'Madea' tops 'Jonas Brothers' for a second box office win
'Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail' wins big at the box office
'Friday the 13th' slashes records
EW.com's Box Office Chart
Watchmen brought in $4.6 million from midnight screenings that took place early Friday, according to Media by Numbers. Zack Snyder's anticipated adaptation of Alan Moore's landmark comic played at midnight last night in 1,595 theaters nationwide, including 124 IMAX presentations, all of which sold out (forcing the addition of about 20 screenings at 3 a.m.). By comparison, Snyder's last violent comic-book epic, 300, grossed $2.5 mil in the same sort of early showings two years ago; it went on to bank $70.9 mil over the course of its first weekend. The R-rated Watchmen opens today around the world.
While a fair weekend projection can't be based on that early $4.6 mil figure, it's certainly safe to say that the movie is off to a very good start. Check back on EW.com all weekend for box office updates and analysis.
More Box Office News:
Box Office Preview: 'Watchmen' will be No. 1, but how much will it make?
'Madea' tops 'Jonas Brothers' for a second box office win
'Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail' wins big at the box office
'Friday the 13th' slashes records
EW.com's Box Office Chart
Watchmen opens this weekend, in case you haven't heard. Word of the comic-based film's long-awaited debut did get out around Hollywood, apparently: The competition is completely steering clear. So, as the only big new release, Zack Snyder's anticipated adaptation of Alan Moore's geek bible certainly will be No. 1. But just how well will it do? Read on. Oh, and did I mention that it's long-awaited and anticipated? Just making sure.
1. Watchmen -- $75 million
I still vividly remember the shockwaves that rumbled through Tinseltown when Snyder's last R-rated graphic-novel techy epic, 300, opened to a huge $70.9 mil on this weekend two years ago. (The ground shook so intensely that I felt tremors in Las Vegas, where I was that weekend.) That was huge. And this movie, with a similar pedigree, a similar fan base, a similar release pattern in more than 3,000 venues, including several expensive-ticket IMAX locations, should be pretty damn big, too. But will it be bigger than 300? Marginally, yes, I think. Watchmen could be hurt by its nearly three-hour running time, but it's based on a monumental book about which excitement has been building for two decades. What's more, it's opening in a few hundred more theaters than 300 did, and ticket prices have gone up in the years since the Spahhhhrtahhhns stormed the box office. Keeping track of its returns will be fun, indeed.
2. Slumdog Millionaire -- $10 million
The Oscar winner got a boost after its Best Picture win and has now grossed more than $200 mil worldwide.
3. Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail -- $9 million
In less than two weeks, Tyler Perry's latest movie has become his top domestic grosser to date, with nearly $70 mil in the bank.
4. Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience -- $8 million
Eh, don't feel so bad for the boys. They may not have made Miley-sized millions last weekend, but their big-screen extravaganza averaged almost $10,000 per theater -- and it should hang on strong this time around.
5. Taken -- $7 million
With little direct boy-baiting competition (except, maybe, Friday the 13th, which was only viable for one day, really), Liam Neeson's action flick has cruised to a $110 mil take at the box office during the past month. Which is to say: Watchmen's debut could finally hurt a bit.
More Box Office News:
'Madea' tops 'Jonas Brothers' for a second box office win
'Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail' wins big at the box office
'Friday the 13th' slashes records
EW.com's Box Office Chart
'He's Just Not That Into You' gets lots of love
Today, Watchmen and 300 director Zack Snyder is launching cruelfilms.com, the website for his production company Cruel and Unusual Films, and has provided EW.com with this never-before-seen image from one of the opening scenes from Watchmen, which opens March 6. The image, Snyder says, is one of the first glimpses audiences will have of the film's anti-hero, Rorschach, as he shoots a grappling gun into the Comedian's
apartment while investigating his fallen comrade's mysterious death.
(More on the film in a bit.)
"We just wanted to have a place where people could see what
we're up to," Snyder tells EW.com exclusively about the site. "As a
company, we're into a lot of cool stuff, like aesthetic and design. The
movies we make, and are making, feed a lot off of pop-culture." The site includes a section called The Lounge, where the company -- which includes company co-president Deborah Synder (who's also Zack's wife), and producer Wesley Coller -- list what they're watching (the anime film Appleseed), reading (Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead) and listening to (Allison Crow's "Hallelujah"). Snyder also invites artists to submit versions of the Cruel and Unusual Films logo: A rough-and-tumble anime Catholic schoolgirl called Baby Doll who'll be the heroine of Snyder's in-the-works project Sucker Punch. "I always thought it would be cool, like, 'Hey, Frank Miller, you should draw a version of Baby Doll,'" Snyder says. "[Drawing her] is kind of a fun assignment, you know, for the world."
The rest of the site includes an eclectic collection of links to sites that have captured the company's fancy -- including the website for Violet's Cakes, a cupcake confectionery owned by Snyder's ex-wife -- and a listing of all of Cruel and Unusual Films' projects. Watchmen, based on the famed graphic novel, just had a massive weight lifted from its shoulders after Warner Bros. and Fox settled a legal dispute over the rights to the film -- a dispute that had threatened to keep the finished film out of theaters indefinitely. The settlement, Snyder says, is "a big relief to me. I'm glad that cooler heads prevailed and the fans are not going to have to resort to any criminal acts." He laughs. "I'm half-joking. I'm glad there's that kind of passion [about the movie], I guess."
More on Watchmen and Zack Snyder:
'Watchmen': An Exclusive First Look
'Watchmen': The Fox/WB suit is settled
'Watchmen': A chat with director Zack Snyder
A sneak peak at the 'Watchmen' movie
The war over Watchmen between Fox and Warner Bros. is over. The settlement, finalized late Thursday, has Warner Bros. forking over a chunk of change (including old development costs, plus interest) and a portion of the film's theatrical revenues. The L.A. Times reports the cash figure at $1.5 million (though Variety says it could be as much as $10 million), while multiple reports say Warner Bros. might be ceding as much as 8.5 percent of the box office receipts. Fox will also get a piece of future sequels or spin-offs (which are unlikely), but it does not appear that the company will be sharing in revenues generated from DVD sales and licensed merchandise.
And so ends months of enormous free publicity for Watchmen, which not so long ago was deemed a marketing-challenged gamble, being that it’s an R-rated, 2 hour-plus superhero epic based on characters nobody knows. But director Zack Snyder's dark opus now enjoys intense Must See buzz thanks to the mainstream media’s intense interest in Fox’s dogged pursuit of justice, not to mention Warner Bros.' decision not resolve the matter until six weeks prior to the movie’s March 6 release, just as billboards and TV ads begin flooding the national mediasphere. Well played, folks. Well played.
Dec 26, 2008, 01:12 PM | by Jeff Jensen
Categories: 'Watchmen'
You know how Santa Claus gives lumps of coal on Christmas Eve to those who’ve been very, very naughty? Well, so do judges. In a twist befitting the comic book in question, the judge presiding over the legal battle for distribution rights to Watchmen found in favor of Fox. The bottom line: Warner Bros. had absolutely no right to roll film on Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons superhero classic. As fans wait to see if the ruling will prevent the film from being released as scheduled on March 3, Fox and Warner Bros. are waiting to see if the court will determine how much Fox should get for being so wronged -- unless the studios decide to settle the matter themselves.
The ruling comes as a surprise to Hollywood observers, mostly because no one expected the judge would issue this ruling at all. The conventional wisdom was that Warner Bros. and Fox would settle privately, and the rightness and wrongness of the situation would never be officially called. Moreover, on Dec. 16, the judge set a Jan. 20 trial date for the dispute, saying he had no intention of fulfilling the request of both parties to issue a summary judgment. Why? Because, he said, the darn thing was just too complicated!
But on Christmas Eve, Judge Gary Allen Feess reversed course and issued a ruling that was clear and decisive. Why did he change his mind? Because Fox and Warner Bros. asked him to. In the wake of Feess’ Dec. 16 edict, both studios pressed him to reconsider and issue a summary judgment, saying that settling this thing between them was all but impossible because they needed his guidance on interpreting an old contract between Fox and Watchmen producer Larry Gordon. That paper appears to indicate the following: Fox has always had the right to distribute a Watchmen movie; anytime Gordon put together a new version of a Watchmen movie (which is to say, develop a new script or snag a new director for the film), he had to offer Fox the chance to produce and distribute it; if Fox passed on the project, Gordon had the right to purchase Fox’s interest in Watchmen and take the project elsewhere.
More details on the ruling and what it means after the jump...
Remember that scene in Footloose, set to Bonnie Tyler's 'I Need A Hero," where Kevin Bacon and some other guy each jump in tractors and start driving toward each other very slowly and from really far away in what just may be the most ridiculously great game of vehicular chicken ever staged for the silver screen? No? NO?! Oh, you sad, culturally impoverished soul! Please rectify that right now by clicking here.
Pretty awesome, huh?
Anyway, the current high-stakes legal war between Fox and Warner Bros. over rights to Watchmen kinda reminds me of that scene. Yesterday, the judge in this slooooow-burning, why-hasn’t-this-been-resolved-by-now? showdown decided to delay the trial from Jan. 6 to Jan. 20. More provocatively, the judge declined to grant the requests of both sides to issue a summary judgment — meaning that this increasingly high-stakes game of Hollywood chicken will result in the messy, juicy collision of a trial...or it won’t, because between now and Jan. 20, Warner Bros. and Fox will forge a settlement, which is most likely what the judge has been trying to not-so passive-aggressively facilitate all along.
Then again, what do we know? We barely understand how traffic court works.
Watchmen fans, the clock is now ticking — and that’s a good thing. A Jan. 6 trial date has been set for Warner Bros. and Fox to duke it out over what’s basically a very expensive unpaid toll ticket. To wit: Did Warner Bros. and producer Larry Gordon move on Zack Snyder’s $100 million adaptation of Alan Moore’s dark, revisionist superhero saga without first properly buying out Fox’s stake in the film? Regardless how the question is answered, the Jan. 6 court date would seem to all but assure that Watchmen will be released on March 6. For all you furious anti-Fox geeks who bought crayons to make Wolverine pickets, we hope you kept the receipt.
Parsing U.S. District Court Judge Gary Allen Feess’ edicts on this matter has become great entertainment blogger sport — so let’s play! With a trial looming, and with the judge stating the case is too “complex” for him to grant Fox’s request that he block Watchmen’s release, pressure is on both parties to settle the dispute before one of them emerges a big loser. As some armchair analysts have pointed out, arguments will likely center on whether or not a 1991 payment to Fox effectively renders this whole business moot, or if a subsequent 1994 agreement between Fox and Gordon (who has been trying to mount a Watchmen movie for many years with several different studios) kept that option open. In papers filed prior to the Labor Day weekend, Warner Bros. put forth the fanciful notion that Fox doesn’t deserve squat because they sat on their hands for years and did nothing to make the movie or even prevent others from doing so. Fox’s counter-argument: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Such kidders, you Warner Bros. people are! Even if that’s true — so what?
You’d think Warner Bros. would want to pony up some cash just to
make this stupid thing go away — that is, after milking it for all the PR
it’s worth, given how much everyone is all "Watchmen this" and "Watchmen
that" these days. Seriously, I should have “Zack Snyder’s $100 million
adaptation of Alan Moore’s dark revisionist superhero saga” programmed
into a default setting on my computer by now. If there was ever any
worry that this “obscure” comic was going to have to deal with an
awareness/relevancy problem with mainstream moviegoers, that concern
has now been alleviated by a factor of 37.98%, according to the
Crackpotatron we keep in the EW bloggercave — and that number is growing
larger every day.
--Written by Jeff Jensen
While comic book aficionados wonder if Warner Bros. will release its controversial superhero flick Watchmen as scheduled next March, one famous fan of the groundbreaking graphic novel says he’s seen Zack Snyder’s $100 million opus, and judging from his reaction, it appears all the fuss the film has stirred up is worth it.
Clerks helmer Kevin Smith (pictured) — who apparently was invited to see the film at Snyder’s invitation shortly after Comic-Con last month — has posted an unabashed rave for Watchmen over at MySpace: “I saw Watchmen. It’s f---ing astounding. The Non-Disclosure Agreement I signed prevents me from saying much, but I can spout the following with complete joygasmic enthusiasm: Snyder and Co. have pulled it off. Remember that feeling of watching Sin City on the big screen and being blown away by what a faithful translation of the source material it was, in terms of both content and visuals? Triple that, and you’ll come close to watching Watchmen.”
Of course, depending on how you felt about Sin City, Smith’s assessment may or may not strike you as impressive. So EW.com asked Smith — currently prepping his R-rated lewd laugher Zack and Miri Make A Porno for a Halloween premiere — to expand just a smidge: “My God, the flick is amazing.” Okay. And? “Anything more and I start getting phone calls.” Fair enough.
Smith’s gush might be encouraging for those who’ve long doubted that even a good film could be distilled out of Watchmen’s dense, complex story, let alone one that’s “f---ing astounding.” But there is still reason to worry: as EW reported in July, Snyder is currently endeavoring to trim a nearly three-hour version of Watchmen (which is believed to be the iteration Smith saw) down to two hours and 25 minutes, the studio’s desired running time, even though Snyder’s preference is that the movie be released as long as possible.
