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.
"We have sold more than a million copies since the Watchmen trailer debuted with The Dark Knight last summer," a spokesperson for DC Comics told Wired.com via email. The spokesperson neither confirmed or denied a huge uptick in sales after the film's opening, but it seems probable, especially after reading the humorous comments from DC Comics president and publisher Paul Levitz on how Snyder's controversial adaptation has sent comics flying off the shelves.
"We literally can't print enough," Levitz told Wired.com at Comic-Con in 2008. "I don't think we've been able to kill any more trees fast enough."
Judging by the best-sellers lists, that pace has most likely accelerated since the film's opening. Watchmen entered USA Today's Top 150 in 2008 shortly after its trailer premiered during screenings of The Dark Knight last July. Since then, sales skyrocketed into the Top 10. After the film's opening last week, Watchmen shot up to the number two slot and there it remains.
Similarly, on the New York Times' newly christened graphic novel best-seller list, Watchmen currently owns the top spot for comic paperbacks as well as third position for hardcovers.
As New York Times' bookworm George Gene Gustines wrote, "There is going to be a lot of Alan Moore on these lists for the first couple of months."
And therein lies Watchmen's hope for a cult-film following that could carry the movie all the way into summer. If newbie consumers who saw the film without reading the comic first go back to theaters for repeat viewings after a taste of the graphic novel, that should keep box-office obsessives smiling through the blood.
And then there is Watchmen's intense marketing blitz. Ramming home the point with ubiquitous posters, action figures, comics and viral campaigns, the advertising spectacle should convince anyone who still hasn't seen the film or the comic that there's something behind the buzz.
Yet the key demographic are those who saw the movie but have not read the original work. Given the comic's increasingly stellar performance on the best-seller lists, burgeoning interest in the comic could lead right back to the film for compare-and-contrast nerd sessions aimed at sussing out sub-narratives, Easter eggs and more.
Thanks to the dense source material, Snyder's Watchmen seems destined for cult-classic longevity in the vein of other controversial R-rated classics including Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange or Terry Gilliam's Brazil. Like The Dark Knight before it, Watchmen is not without its own flaws, but nevertheless stands as a shining example what comics can do on the big screen when they are taken seriously by Hollywood.
Other factors bode well for Watchmen, the movie. This weekend, Watchmen battles lightweight remakes like Disney's Race to Witch Mountain and Wes Craven's Last House on the Left. The next potential blockbuster won't show up until May, when Terminator: Salvation is released.
Of course, this is all speculation: Watchmen's fate will be decided in the next few weeks. Will it turn into a word-of-mouth sensation, or wither in the shadow of Christian Bale and the latest Terminator holocaust? What do you think? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
Photo courtesy Warner Bros.
See also:
- Review: Watchmen Film Straddles Line Between Loyalty, Heresy
- Watchmen's Clockwork Origins Span Comics, Quantum Physics
- Watchmen Soundtrack Merges History, Money
- Is Watchmen Director Zack Snyder Really 'Visionary'?
- Legendary Comics Writer Alan Moore on Superheroes, The League and Making Magic
- Archaeologizing Watchmen: An Interview With Dave Gibbons
