Race to Witch Mountain squashed Watchmen at the box-office over the weekend. Attendance for Zack Snyder's controversial adaptation dropped by two-thirds to around $18 million in receipts, while the Disney remake hauled in an estimated $25 million.
But the dystopian comic blockbuster isn't dead yet. Far from it.
With over $49 million in total international receipts to go with its domestic take of over $86 million, chatter about Watchmen's failure to recoup its $200 million expense is grinding to a halt.
And, as Wired.com noted earlier, until potential blockbusters Terminator Salvation, Star Trek and X-Men Origins: Wolverine arrive in May, Watchmen has few rivals on the horizon. It seems likely that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' canonical comic will survive its evolution to the big screen just fine, thanks.
And that's just theatrical revenue. Once the DVD campaign gets rolling, Watchmen could easily make back its costs with cash to spare, especially if Synder puts together a director's cut that reintegrates extra material along with the entire Tales of the Black Freighter meta-narrative.
Throw in the limited-run theatrical release of an already announced director's cut in July, and all that Monday morning quarterbacking pigeonholing Watchmen as a letdown could boil down to uninformed speculation by parties unaware of the comic's enduring power and influence.
Photo courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
See also:
- Cult Status, Comic Sales Could Boost Watchmen Box Office
- Review: Watchmen Film Straddles Line Between Loyalty, Heresy
- Watchmen's Clockwork Origins Span Comics, Quantum Physics
- Watchmen Soundtrack Merges History, Money
- Legendary Comics Writer Alan Moore on Superheroes, The League and Making Magic
- Archaeologizing Watchmen: An Interview With Dave Gibbons
