Who watches the Watchmen? Apparently just comic book fans and men over 25. Just like the films reviews were polarized, the box office take this weekend can be viewed as a success or a failure depending on your school of thought.

Let me start by saying that I was way wrong with my prediction of $65M. Watchmen grossed $55.6M this weekend. Not even close to my expectations for the film. I overestimated the audience for Watchmen and also didn’t put as much stock into the nearly 3 hour running time and the R rating as I should have. I thought that those two things would be nullified by the ultra wide launch in over 3600 theatres. After seeing the film I do believe that it deserved a $65M (or higher) launch but it is what it is. 

Let’s take a look at the positive side of a $55.6M debut. Overall it was enough to be the biggest debut of the year so far, the third largest March opening in history behind Zack Snyder’s own 300 ($70.9M) and Ice Age: The Meltdown ($68M) and the sixth best opening for an R rated film. Take a look:
The Matrix Reloaded - $91.8M
The Passion of the Christ - $83.8M
300 -  $70.9M
Hannibal - $58M
Sex and the City - $57M
Watchmen - $55.6M
Watchmen’s opening also fell in line with recent comic book flicks X-Men ($54.5M) and Fantastic Four ($56.1M). The comparison is favorable because those movies also feature a team of super heroes (unlike Batman or Spider-Man) and they were both properties that were widely popular among comic book fans and not many others. $55.6M is also a very nice debut for a film that runs nearly 3 hours.

Now let’s take a look at the negative. First, Watchmen fell short of Snyder’s last film, 300, proving that it doesn’t have the same broad appeal.  300 also brought in plenty of women which Watchmen had a difficult time doing (over 65% of the audience was male). The opening day gross (including Thursday midnight showings) was an impressive $25.1M, but this accounts for about 45% of the overall weekend take. Generally the opening day of a hit film will account for about a third of the overall weekend. That being said, Watchmen dropped 25% on Saturday and close to an additional 40% on Sunday. This does not bode well for the future. Positive word of mouth would certainly help, but the film is so polarizing that the chances of a friend telling you it sucked are just as likely as them telling you it was great. For what it is worth, I loved it and would recommend it to anybody. This is also a film that truly deserves to be seen on the big screen. I would expect Watchmen to suffer a fairly hefty drop next weekend, possibly in the 65 – 70% range.

Among holdovers, not one film managed to gross over $9M. Madea Goes to Jail dropped a reasonable 45% in its third outing to gross $8.8M right on target with my forecast. After weeks of climbing the charts and award season buzz over, Slumdog Millionaire had its sharpest decline yet (42%) to add $6.9M to its already staggering gross. This was about $2M less than what I expected for this weekend. Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience plummeted 78%, one of the largest drops in history, to gross $2.8M for the frame and bringing its total gross to $16.8M. This certainly puts an end to the debate over who has more fans, Jonas Brothers or Miley Cyrus. By contrast, Miley’s 3-D concert by the end of its second weekend grossed a total of $53.2M in half as many theatres. The Jonas Brothers 78% drop off was even larger than the big 65% drop I had anticipated. To see how the rest of my predictions fared, check out the chart below.