Box Office Report: Superman Tanks, Relatively Speaking (Insert Kryptonite Cleverness Here)
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Drama, Warner Brothers, Box Office, Family Films, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels
So, let's start with the good news for Warner Bros.: Superman Returns topped the box office this weekend! Yay! The film made just over $52 million from 4065 screens, easily out-earning The Devil Wears Prada, which took in $27 million on about 1200 fewer screens. The bad news, however, is that, big-picture, the movie tanked. Its $81.2 million over the first five days of release is good enough for ... 30th place on the all-time, five-day list. Add to that the facts that a)27 of the films that earned more opened on fewer screens, and b)WB is rumored to have spent about $300 million total (including promotional costs) on the movie, and those box office numbers spell a very, very, VERY worried studio. Look for the WB spin to kick into high gear on Monday, featuring sound bytes like "It outdid our expectations among female senior citizens" and "When the World Cup is over, just watch the box office explode!"Meanwhile, Click and Nacho Libre both dropped about 50%, with Click's $19.4 million placing it in the third spot, and Nacho Libre's $6.2 good enough for fifth, right behind a still-solid Cars. In other news, The Break-Up is still in the top 10. This weekend's earnings of $2.8 million ran the movie's total domestic takes to about $110 million and pushed it even further into the black. The full top 10 is after the jump.
1. Superman Returns, $52.2 million
2. The Devil Wears Prada, $27 million
3. Click, $19.4 million
4. Cars, $14 million
5. Nacho Libre, $6.2 million
6. The Lake House, $4.5 million
7. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, $4.4 million
8. Waist Deep, $3.3 million
9. The Break-Up, $2.8 million
10. The Da Vinci Code, $2.3 million
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-02-2006 @ 6:55PM
Kevin Ahearn said...
It's not that SUPERMAN was too long or too talky or too comic bookish...worst of all, it was too LATE!
20 years ago would have been BO punctual.
KA
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7-02-2006 @ 8:22PM
Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout said...
Test time. With the MPAA reveling in how much pirates have hurt the movie industry, and how important their recent busts are, I bet summer revenue's are still dirt low. Who will they blame then?
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7-02-2006 @ 8:27PM
Zachary Bordas said...
I saw "The Devil Wears Prada" On its opening night and i loved every minute of it from start to end i could not take my eyes off the screen for Meryl Streep is a movie goddess and so is Anne Hathaway!!!! I laughed, cried, and smiled the whole time I give it a A+++++ and two thumbs up!!!
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7-02-2006 @ 10:01PM
elizabeth said...
I'm glad that you enjoyed the film Zachary.. but your comment has little to do with the point of this article. Distributors should cool their heels and wait for the numbers to finish coming in before declaring failure. Generally, they clear the cost of making and promoting films when the profits are included for international box office and dvd sales. This kind of premature gloom and doom is overdramatic. In general, they should foster better filmmakers at smaller budgets then maybe they wouldn't sweat the cost so much. The passion should be for the pictures, the profit will follow.
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7-03-2006 @ 8:52AM
Nobody said...
It still did better than Batman Begins, and the 4th of July weekend isn't really over yet... But I doubt if it will reach $300 million domestically. It will have to make back its money from the international box office.
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7-03-2006 @ 6:54PM
Clark Kent said...
Hey, how about some honesty in your reporting! We're under sveral feet of water all over the East, especially New York and Pennsylvania. How do you expect us to get to the movie theaters to see the Man of Steel. I predict legs on this and a solid 4th of July opening!
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7-04-2006 @ 11:54AM
Zach Muhn said...
I liked Superman generally. But I thought they spent too much time explaining what happened with Lois in his time AWOL and not enough time on developing the action and conflict of the story between Luthor and Superman. And I cannot buy Kate Bosworth as Lois. She looks like she's still in high school, too young to be a Pulitzer reporter, let alone a mother of a four year old kid. And she's supposed to have had all this history and experience with Superman and as a top reporter in the five years before Superman returned? Did she start working at the Daily planet when she was in 5th grade? Junior high? Did she and Superman meet on MySpace? Does that make the Man of Steel a pedophile?
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7-10-2006 @ 2:04AM
Eric Belser said...
What did Hollywood expect? Trotting out yet another tired old remake of a movie and spending wads on it isn't going to capture any great audience. There have been too many Superman/Batman movies already, no wonder the latest ones tanked...especially in a summer that offered a new installment of X-men.
There's nothing wrong with a well done sequel to a popular movie. Disney is proving that point again this weekend, but overall if the studios want to expand the market they must come up with new movies!
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7-11-2006 @ 2:42PM
kris said...
I thought that Superman Returns was very well done personally, the effects were spectacular. Can't complain about the acting, storyline was okay, and Brandon Routh did a very good job at Superman. I really liked the soundtrack, a good soundtrack always helps. Overall an awesome movie, I can see why people would complain about it, but I'm not one to complain. My only real complaint would probably be Kate Bosworth as Lois, oh well.
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7-12-2006 @ 1:01PM
tony said...
Gime me a Break,,
It was Crap, so very P.C !!
Let me see the old old Serials first..
The WB's Smallville is excellent, but this was TRIPE, I wouldn't watch it for free again, nor any sequel by WHATEVER CLOWN put his effort into it,, Purple Tights??
A Wee bit anti-macho, maybe OK in France??
IDIOTS!
Like Clooney In BATMAN,, a laff, worse than Speilburgs "War Of the Worlds"
w/ the Dwarf Tom Cruise as an ACTION hero.
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