When Zack Snyder’s cinematic adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ canonical comic Watchmen raked in $55 million after its domestic opening and over $26 million in its international debut, armchair quarterbacking over the impossibility of a Dark Knight-like payday kicked into overdrive. This weekend’s performance is pivotal for those quarterbacks, which includes critics and fans, and also for studio executives reliant upon superhero tent-poles to keep their sagging business afloat.
Hollyweird metrics indicate that the $150-plus million movie, saddled with a $50 million marketing bill, won’t match The Dark Knight’s numbers. But that was a pipe dream from the get-go, given the cerebral source material featuring a nuclear dystopia drained of conventional heroism. Creeping towards $70 million in domestic receipts at about $3 million per day, Watchmen needs several big weekends to recoup its expense. Standard viewer drop-off makes that a daunting challenge.
But there is one wild card working in the Watchmen film’s favor, and it is a glaring one: The comic.
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