'Watchmen' box-office reporting: Not a pretty picture

A wise old Hollywood hand taught me ages ago that the only way you can even begin to figure out a film's profit potential on its opening weekend is by knowing how much it cost to make in the first place.

So, if you were trying to write a halfway knowledgeable story about the opening weekend box office for "Watchmen," you would surely want to mention somewhere how much the movie cost. With that in mind, while most of the buzz in Hollywood today was about whether "Watchmen's" $56-million weekend take was a boffo opening or a bust (since the Zack Snyder-directed film didn't come close to the $70 million Snyder's "300" made on exactly the same date two years ago), I was eyeballing the showbiz media coverage to see if anyone got to the real issue -- was $56 million a good opening for a movie that cost roughly $150 million to make?

I hate to say it, but most of the media flunked their Hollywood math quiz. I've had my beefs with my own newspaper's box-office coverage over the years, but today's piece -- written by David Pierson -- aced the exam. The story not only had the $150-million figure but mentioned a key detail, noting that "Watchmen" actually outpaced "300's" Friday numbers, but then fell off badly afterward, something that bodes poorly for the film's performance in days to come. Pierson also noted that this drop-off came despite an aggressive marketing campaign amid "scant competition and an uptick in U.S. movie attendance."

The Wall Street Journal also passed the test, since its story included a budget figure (though it had the budget at only "more than $120 million"). But virtually everyone else flunked. The New York Times, for example, had room in its story to offer a hilarious quote from a Duke University professor (sorry about that tough loss to the Tarheels, big guy) who went to see the film and announced that "Everyone around me liked it a lot more than I did." But the Times didn't bother to dig up a budget number.

The weakest story, sadly, was from Variety, the showbiz trade whose reporters are incredibly knowledgeable but rarely show off their inside-dope in their reporting. So Variety's story had all sorts of arcane information about "Watchmen," including its running time, ratings history, theater count, etc. -- but no budget figure. Since it's apparently impossible for any Variety scribe to describe any showbiz event as "disappointing," the story decided to call the film's performance "lower than expected," though it immediately added the upbeat assessment that the film was "still scoring the best opening of the year and one of the best showings ever for an R-rated film." But a budget figure? Not a chance.

And what about Deadline Hollywood's Nikki Finke, who last week ran a post saying her box-office experts were predicting that the movie would do $70 million? Well, Nikki flunked the test -- twice. First off, her post on the box-office results, which claimed that the film had a "blockbuster" opening, never mentioned a budget number. And secondly, she took down her original $70 million prediction post, simply clicking a key and making it vanish into thin air. When she's right, she trumpets her scoops with a huge "TOLDJA!" headline. But when her sources are off the mark, she gets rid of the damning evidence. When I e-mailed her, wondering what happened to the original post, she said that her writing over her wrongs was completely transparent. Actually, I'd say it's the complete opposite.

But for the record, here is her response, just the way she e-mailed it to me: "As usual Patrick, and other Monday morning quarterbacks, you don't know what you're talking about. Every weekend I do box office, and some of the time, I leave up the predictions by my box office gurus. And some of the time I refine the predictions as the box office comes in. My goal is to keep up the most accurate box office in real time, and I accomplish that."

So how did "Watchmen" actually do? We'll know for sure next weekend. If it only drops off 30% or 40%, it could hold up well enough here and overseas to turn a profit. But if the drop is closer to the collapse the "Matrix Revolutions" sequel suffered, everyone who has a lot of money in the picture -- starting with Warners -- will be battening down the hatches, since its hard to believe that "Watchmen's" extreme violence and strange Nixonian-era American politics will make it a much bigger winner overseas than here.    

Photo of Matthew Goode, left, as Ozymandias and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian in "Watchmen" by Clay Enos / Warner Bros.

Comments

[C.]

I saw the movie and didn't know anything about the graphic novel, but I have to say that while it was WAY too long, I did enjoy the movie overall and I don't quite understand why everyone is bashing the movie. The Fantastic Four was much worse. One thing I will say is this though: I agree with this reviewer in that no one is addressing the fact that this movie was not as successful as they're claiming. They're proclaiming the opening weekend numbers are good, but when you break it down, the per theater average was something like $15,291 in 3,611 theaters, while the opening for Madea Goes to Jail was $20,192 per theater, based on 2,032 theaters. This is not even counting screens, just the theaters. If I'm not mistaken, The Watchmen was on something like 7,000 screens, the largest ever. Taking these numbers into account, it's clear that this movie grossly underperformed and was not the huge success people are saying it is. This is not to bash The Watchmen, it's just to be real about the situation and be truthful about the movie's true performance.

[DSL]

The American viewing public is stunted and juvenile anyway and wouldn't know a good movie from bad. The mental defectives swarmed to see Paul Blart didn't they?

[chrisfranklin]

I saw the film last last night. Never read the graphic novel and never really looked for much in the way of thoughtfulness from the writers of most comic books or comic-book based films.

But for the most part I was impressed with Watchmen, very impressed.

I think that it was a bit of a disservice to movie-goers to market the films as though it was going to be come kind of Fantastic Four. But I guess caveat emptor applies to movies too.

Watchmen Is R-rated and that's no fluke judgment on the part of the ratings board either.
It is not for the majority of movie-goers.

But if you were a bright dude who was amused by films like Heavy Metal, Batman Begins or Sin City, then you'll probably like Watchmen. I'd say Watchmen's box office take may benefit from repeated viewings and a bit of a cult following.

[Dan]

And now it's my turn to bust your chops for not doing YOUR research; "The Dark Knight" saw a similar drop-off its first weekend (admittedly to substantially higher numbers), and "Watchmen" has already opened overseas, according to Box Office Mojo. The take so far? $26 million. Not too shabby.

[Mark Hughes]

I think this article, while noting important problems in media reporting on this film (and films in general), also ignores a pretty major aspect of the equation: DVD. Most films either don't make back their entire budget (production plus advertising) at the box office or don't turn much of a profit at the box office, but count on the DVD sales for their profit. The profit margin is astronomically high on DVD (where it costs pennies to produce the product and the sale prices are thousands of times that cost). The additional expense of producing the DVDs is dwarfed by the huge return on that investment, so it adds an enormous profit to the overall affair.

The second installment of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise had made almost as much in DVD sales in about its first month on sale as it made during the entire domestic run in theaters ($235+ million by January 2004). "The Dark Knight" broke $200 million in DVD sales in about 9 weeks. Even "Changeling", hardly a summer blockbuster, has made $7+ million in DVD sales in just two weeks of release, or over 20% of its production budget. "Changeling" ended up with box office almost doubling it's production budget, despite taking over three weeks to make back even half its production budget in domestic box office.

"Watchmen" made back 33% of its production budget in the first weekend's domestic box office, and over half its production budget in worldwide gross. Even with a 50% drop in box office ever single weekend from now on, it would still pull in a total box office of $160 million off weekend gross alone (excluding Monday through Thursday box office entirely) in about 8 weekends -- again, just off weekend grosses alone. Assuming a box office run of just 2 and a half months, it would only need to make an average of about $4 million per week on the weekdays to hit $200 million. And of course, average box office drops don't tend to be 50% every single week for the entirety of a film's run.

"Watchmen" should easily be in profit territory off weekend grosses alone by its eighth weekend, and even a 60-70% drop on the second weekend would only mean perhaps a dozen weeks to get into profit-territory off of weekend box office alone. The point being, though, that the eventual DVD sales figures -- off of a tiny additional investment for making the DVDs -- will provide the bulk of actual profit margin, and with the film already being in profit territory from the box office run, the DVD sales are just tens of millions of easy profit.

Do I even have to mention the rather obvious piles of cash they are making off of the non-DVD merchandising as well? Keep in mind that DC Comics is part of the parent company for Warner Bros, and that sales of the "Watchmen" graphic novel and related merchandising have been off the chart and set records for last year just on anticipation of the film's release. What will the cable rights be for this film, too? "Superman Returns" brought in around $22+ million for such broadcast rights, so expect "Watchmen" to at least come close to that figure.

Even a box office "flop" like "Speed Racer" can still make almost half as much in its first weekend of DVD sales as it made in its first weekend in theaters (it had made over $18 million in DVD sales by December 2008, and with Blu-Ray sales it should have recouped the production budget off of the box office, DVD, and Blu-Ray sales by the end of February, based on sales projections). This just demonstrates that unpopular, critically panned box office "flops" can at the very least avoid an overall monetary loss with the help of even poor DVD and Blu-Ray sales. If "Watchmen" makes ZERO dollars every Monday through Thursday, is pulled from theaters after only 10 weeks, and then goes on to be a DVD and Blu-Ray flop on par with "Speed Racer", then, the film will still make a profit of about $30 million, assuming it hasn't made a single cent off of other merchandising like tee-shirts and pins and comic book sales and posters and toys. Think about that.

So if it only suffers perhaps a 40% drop for the later weekends, and if it makes just a couple of million Monday through Friday, and if it remains in theaters for perhaps 15 or 20 weeks (still a ridiculously short amount of time, obviously), then what are we talking about for the box office numbers? We're talking about another $20-30 million in box office, that's what, and a $200+ million box office total, still assuming lack-luster overall performance and a big initial drop-off in the first weekend, and a short theatrical run.

The modern assessment of film and marketing is woefully inadequate, even among journalists who make serious attempts to look deeper, as this article tried to do. The home-sales and merchandising have become far too relevant to the marketing and bottom-line analysis for studios, but this is still not fully appreciated by the media reporting on the topic. "Watchmen" will turn a profit at the box office, even if it's a relatively small one of just $10 million or $20 million or $30 million depending on which absurdly pessimistic addition we use. Then it will go to DVD and Blu-Ray, where it will probably do very well and at least match the abysmal sales of "Speed Racer" to grab another $20+ million. Then it will go to cable. And all the while, it has tee-shirts and comic books and posters and toys and other merchandise selling.

To even entertain the notion that this film won't turn a very nice profit for the studio would be naive and silly, and even worse is to overlook the fact that the studios account for these things nowadays.

[Dan]

A true big picture view may have noted that WATCHMEN the book is the #1 seller at Amazon. 23 years after the initial publishing! In the comic book movie word, aftermarket merchandising is nearly as important as box office.

[juepucta]

Wait.

Because after all the worldwide tx sales are tallied up PLUS all the DVD/blu-ray (in their 93963 iterations and packaging aimed at the nerd market, LOTR style) this movie will prove to be far from a failure.

This, independent of the film's quality.

-G.

[Dan]

Hats off to marketing. They got it right. Got me in the door with people who haven't read the novel. BUT The film is a big mess. I could deal with the big blue penis if there was something in the plot to actually distract me. Although I mostly hate when hollywood really changes a story, i wish someone had cut this down to a 105 minute story about Rorschach. He was interesting and could carry his own movie. The rest of the characters were BORING and one of those even had breasts, which I almost always find interesting.

[Dave]

One thing that some people may not be taking into account is that because it's so long it's not getting as many showings as the number of screens might indicate. In my local theater it's only getting three weekday showings from two screens-- and it only got six showings from two screens on Saturday and Sunday.

Given a rating that keeps people out and its running time, I think it's not doing badly. It's not in blockbuster territory - but it's doing reasonably well. As always, time will tell.

In the long run it's almost guaranteed a profit because of DVD sales -- especially for the longer versions which will cause some fans to purchase multiple copies -- first the theatrical release, and then the Extended DVD/Blu-Ray with the Black Freighter folded in.

[Mark Hughes]

If "Watchmen" drops by about 70% this coming weekend (both domestic and foreign), and on Wed and Thurs only has 66% of what it made on Mon and Tues (both domestic and foreign estimates), it will still break $110 million total gross after this coming weekend. And the growing buzz about the potential July release -- which includes footage of the newsstand characters and has fans cheering -- plus the ultimate DVD collection described by director Zack Snyder the other day, bode very well for eventual DVD sales.