This is good news and bad news for Warner. Watchmen is #1 at the box office by a long shot. The next closest competitor is Madea Goes to Jail with just $8.8 million. So they ran about 6.5 laps around their closest competition at the box office. However, this figure is substantially lower than the $70+ figure they were quoting originally. You might even say that they were as much as $21 million off the bullseye. These are the North American figures only. I am told you can take the North American figure and multiply by 2 and this is your International + North American box office estimate. This is a good rule of thumb. Real dollars will vary by title. This means Watchmen should have scored $111.4 million at the box office. So where does that put them?
According to this video source, Watchmen cost $150 million to make, $20 million to distribute & promote. Ergo they need to go to $170 to make their capital back. They might have $111 million in the bag right now. The box office may drop as much as 85% next week to just $8.35 domestic, $16.7 internationally. Then the money has to be split between Warners and Fox. The blunt point: They are not on pace to make their money back at this rate. DVD sales and Blu-ray will put them over the top, but they won't do it at the theater.
I expect Fox/Warner to be humiliated as they come in #3 below Miss March and Race to Witch Mountain next week. I am told that the Mann and other theater chains are going to start removing screenings this Thursday night. This will give Warner fewer scheduled times for this 2:43 minute magnum opus, and cut revenues accordingly.
After sleeping on it for 48 hours, I can tell you that Watchmen seems like a curious collection of 1960's hippie predilections and obsessions. You have the JFK assassination conspiracy, Vietnam, Nixon, Henry Kissinger, the doomsday clock, atomic war with the Soviets, the Stonewall rebellion, etc. The audience obsessed with these subjects in now much older (like 60+) and unlikely to be receptive to such an adolescent comic-book musing on the topic of "what if history had been different?" Those cats are listening to NPR for their entertainment these days, and NPR is saying little about the Watchmen. I cannot imagine 20 something kids in South America or Asia getting turned on by this movie. There is no handle on this movie that they might grasp. This is the core reason for the financial failure here.
