Watchmen Tops at Box Office With $55.2M Opening March 10, 2009 1:45 am
Posted by Rosario T. Calabria in Box Office, Movies, News.Tags: Watchmen
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Zack Snyder’s highly anticipated adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novel Watchmen, opened over the weekend with a solid $55.2 million from 3,611 theaters on 7,500 screens, helping the box office improve a healthy 11% over the same time frame last year. The film opened on Friday with $24.5M before dropping 25% on Saturday to $18.4M and 33% on Sunday to $12.3M.
While still a respectable bow, the picture fell slightly below opening weekend expectations of $60-70M.
The film performed better in IMAX venues. Opening in 124 of the large-screen theaters, Watchmen generated a second-best ever $5.4 million, accounting for nearly 10 percent of its weekend gross on less than three and a half percent of the film’s total theater count. (The Dark Knight holds the record — $6.3 million at 94 sites).
In fact, while Watchmen failed to match Snyder’s last film — March record holder 300 which grossed $70.9M in 2007 — Watchmen’s IMAX gross was significantly above 300 ($3.6M from 62 such venues).
In foreign markets, the film took $27.5 million from 5,097 theaters in 45 territories. Thus far, Watchmen is at $82.7M worldwide, slightly more than its estimated $150M production budget.
Sources: Box Office Mojo and Variety
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Check out the real ending from the comic book. It is much squishier:
http://fullbodytransplant.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/watchmen-squid-the-real-ending/
Good times.