Exactly. Bombing at the box office a la BONFIRE OF THE VANITITES or LAST ACTION HERO is one thing. Not living up to hype is another.

Or else check out the "Kevin Smith is the worst director ever" thread elsewhere on this site...

The question posited by this thread isn't "Did it bomb?" It's "Was it a disappointment?" And the answer is Yes.

Mild dissappointment for the studio for sure, but it should still turn a profit with worldwide box office and DVD studios.

The sequel will be better off just due to not starting 50-60 million in the hole for the money wasted with Burton, Cage etc.

I understand. I was responding to the direct statement regarding "box office failure." There is no doubt that it is disappointing when you consider hype, expectations and budget.

But...when you consider that the third SUPERMAN is almost universally held in contempt, and that the last film was an unfinished product which grossed less than $15 million, and that SUPERGIRL is considered on of the biggest critical and box office turkeys of all time...and that all the films are re-run exhaustively on television...it's almost amazing that SUPERMAN RETURNS drew audiences despite the three highly inadequate SUPER-films.

Gee, thanks for clearing that up with the insight.

So, if a movie doesn't open to what a bunch of geeky analysts says what it should open is a disappointment? okay, gotcha, thanks.

By the way, a HUGE disappointment would be Poseidon, which had a budget of $160 million and earned $60 million in the US and barely $100 million overseas.

And the worst part about this? Those said geeky analysts said "Superman Returns" would make in the neighborhood of 55.9 opening weekend. This is according to boxofficemojo. So he/she can't even get their facts straight.

When we talk about these "dissapointments", do we factor in DVD sales? I mean, a film that makes budget or barely makes budget, can still make a huge profit on DVD sales. If you factor that in, then I think Superman Returns will have plenty profit in the long run. Or are we speaking strictly box offfice? If that is the case, then yeah, it didn't perform to what WB would of hoped for.

Had Pirates 2 not smashed Spiderman's opening weekend record, I think Superman would have earned more than $21 million during weekend #2. Warners should have opened Superman at least 2 weeks before Pirates. They could have had a solid opening during weekend 1 and get the July 4 bump for weekend 2. They must not have been scared of Pirates when they set the date.

You know the people at Warner Brothers are probably sick about this. Some might even get the axe for poor planning. But when you look at it the way DieselsDen pointed out, this franchise was dead dead dead. The first four films went from great to abysmal. In both box-office and quality. It was a miracle this film was made at all. And that it has made as much as it has. Here's hoping it can slowly make it to 200M. That would be nice.

Remember how the people at Disney were freaking out during the second week of "Cars"? Saying they didn't think it could make it to 200M? It's at 230M now. And counting.

Mr. Cinema, I see "SR" is your no. #1 film of 2006 so far. Please tell me you've seen it at the IMAX!

I agree an earlier opening date would not have meant SUPERMAN RETURNS getting buried in the hype of another film. Also, all the "Pirates own Superman Returns" negative publicity comments would be lessened,

There is an IMAX downtown here, but sadly, I didn't make it. I watched the 10pm early showing the day before the official release at a regular theater.

With the hell this movie has gone through, I think it's great it did get made. Most movies don't go through several directors, screenplays, lead characters like this one did. Even if it "just" makes $190 million here, WB will greenlight a sequel I think. That's alot of trouble to go through just to settle for 1 movie. They did whatever was necessary to relaunch a possible lucrative franchise. Hell, the last Superman movie was The Quest for Peace. Superman Returns should erase that from people's minds.

I've bragged on Routh quite a bit. Sooner or later, people need to let go of the Reeve = Superman. He was great in the first 2 films. But Routh is now Superman. Move on.

Saw it Sunday My statement still stands, but I enjoyed Clerks 2 as well.

One also has to add that the movie poorly marketed. It took forever to get the hype going and when it did, it showed all the wrong things. No one wanted to see the love story elements, they wanted to see the action. Then again, the marketing on Batman Begins wasn't all that great and it had solid word of mouth.

Superman Returns was by no means a bomb. But, as Groucho said, that's not the question being asked.

"Was it a disappointment?"

Critically? It seemed to get good reviews. I didn't see it, so I can't comment.

But we had endless threads where King Kong and X-Men 3 were "tanking" and were "bombs" and both of those made more money than their reported budget.

For Superman, even discounting the $50MM lost at the early stages, you're still a few million short of breaking even domestically. The movie would need to get to $210MM. That's not going to happen. I don't see it making another $22MM. And even then, the studio is still short $50MM.

Sure, it'll do well on DVD and internationally, but if I was a studio exec, I'd rather have spent that $260MM on Inside Man, Nacho Libre and The Omen. The gross totals are roughly the same except with those three you have $130MM left over.

You see, this is the problem. 50 of that 260 was already in the red regardless of anything. So you had a bleeding wound. By simply releasing the film and eventually breaking even that is some grounds to be happy about.

I dunno...watching Superman fight a giant spider and wrassle polar bears seems pretty appealing after sitting through the snooze-fest that was SUPERMAN RETURNS.

I too think that WB has gone through too much hell to re-launch this franchise to just toss it aside after disappointing numbers that are largely due to just releasing it at the wrong time.
IMO, they shouldn't make a direct sequel, but go all out and make a JLA movie with everyone; Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, etc. WB owns the rights to all of the characters, so why not? One thing I think SR did well was give an opening scroll at the beginning that told you about the world you were going to enter and left the audience with that as opposed to long espositions with an origin. They could definitely pull that with the other heroes and then launch into a story about DarkSeid or something like that.

considering how grounded to reality the film makers have gone out of their way to make for these hero films, I doubt anything like Darkseid would really be acceptable anytime soon. You have to ease them into that sort of thing with monsters and so forth as enemies.

Not to mention you have to wait till wonder woman and the other franchises have been touched on. But a crossover or JLA would be amazing.

I'd say that definitely, SR is a box office disapointment. It not turning profit theatrically isn't really the issue, moreso that even with all ancillary markets included the film probably isn't going to see a great P&L for WB. Throw in P&A and talent participations (which fortunately won't be too large, largely because of the cast) you're probably looking at a lifetime expense for this film well over 400 million, if not more.

But...it's no disaster. It's not a giant money pit, and with the viability of the franchise you very well might see a sequel to make this expense worthwhile. Batman Begins too wasn't a major money maker, but it laid a solid groundwork for a financially viable franchise. SR isn't being as received well though, plus cost a bit more, so that will put a bit more difficulty on the sequel possibilities. But considering the franchise, and considering the film was far from awful, I suspect we shall see more.

But I have no doubt WB is disapointed with those numbers. Though in its favor, it's not the most expensive movie of the summer.

Your wrong!

The problem with Superman Returns was that it was simply a remake/homage/sequel to a very crappy franchise. Batman Begins did it right by starting over.

Oh, and the Batman/Superman crossover idea that would make $400 million box office is absolutely the WORST idea I've ever read on the forum. Even the worst Hollywood execs would nix that idea.

I'm sure some will want to kill me over this, but personally I think that Batman overall has a better storyline/universe than that of Superman.

I was looking at the numbers today, and I'm of the opinion that SUPERMAN RETURNS (domestically speaking) is going to come close to, but fall short of $200 million (maybe somewhere in the $190 million range - perhaps a little more).

Since the last thing I want to see is a bunch of internet posters begging, pleading and starting petitions with Warners to make another Superman film if the movie doesn't hit $200 million, I'm wondering if it's too late to mount some kind of group Internet effort (perhaps the Superman Homepage site could put it together) to mark the weekend of Aug. 11th (not much coming out then, and it's a week before SOAP) as "Save Superman" weekend at the theaters...we'd all agree to go see SUPERMAN RETURNS one more time, to try and push it over the $200 million mark.

Stupid idea? Too difficult to get the word out in time? I dunno...I'm just thinking outloud here should anyone want to help pick up the ball and run with it...

Yes.

Internet buzz and a buck will get you on the bus...ask the folks who greenlit Serenity (though I'm thankful they did).

You need Joe Public to go see it...and he heard it was boring.