Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
March 29, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com

Don't worry, everyone. I probably won't destroy your city as collateral damage when I fight the vi

Kim Hollis: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice earned $166 million domestically and $254 internationally during its debut weekend. What do you think of this result?

Jason Barney: I am of two minds about this. First, by the numbers, this is a pretty stellar opening. Only a small number of films have ever opened this big, and when history is essentially made, it is appropriate to notice. Unfortunately, I find myself struggling for other ways to sugarcoat this...

And I simply cannot. I guess I find myself thinking about much smaller films that make money, that justify the costs involved. Batman v Superman is turning out to be a fine example of box office stupidity, and I feel saddened by one of the potential results here. As a fan of much of the DC comic universe, if the long term numbers don't pan out....you have to wonder if the rest of the "franchises" will ever see the light of day. It is as though DC took a look at what Marvel had accomplished with Avengers, and to a lesser extent X-Men, and just said, "We can do that!"

Unfortunately that seems to be the extent of the thought they put into this. Perhaps I am being too critical here, the film did just open globally to $424 million. By most people's calculations, that is about 40% of the way to profitability, because a billion dollars seems to be the goal. My problem is that the film appears to not just be bad, but absolutely TERRIBLE. For the record, Batman seems to be the only DC character that constantly makes money. Man of Steel was worthy, but fell off the map very quickly. Most people seemed to have forgotten Green Lantern, but that went no where. All we have to do is look at Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy to see the differences here with what Marvel has been able to achieve.

For a superhero film to get a Rotten Tomatoes score of 29%, the film has to be awful. I mean, we are already talking about comic book characters. People are expecting to grab onto the unbelievable and be entertained, and that isn't happening. At all. I will probably see it, but from this point on, I imagine Batman v Superman is going to get hit with some scathing word-of-mouth.

All of my criticism could be premature, though. $424 million in weekend #1 is a big haul.

Ben Gruchow: Every time I saw an industry update this weekend in regard to grosses for this film, I sounded like Sideshow Bob stepping on a rake.

Kudos to Warner Bros. for opening this thing close to $170 million; it's an awesome number. This is a $250 million production with roughly $150 million more in ad spend; the worldwide gross will ensure a profit for this quite easily, unless all my dreams come true and the final worldwide multiplier is 1.5. I don't normally vouch for a film's failure; I express disappointment at BvS:DOJ's relative success here because the movie is a mercenary project that transparently exists mostly to quick-launch a franchise. That happens a lot, but rarely this ponderously, with this lack of ambition or novelty, with this infusion of money, and rarely with this good of a B.O. result. I'll put it this way: Fan4Stic 2015 landed in my Bottom 5 of the year, and it's a terrible movie, but it was at least trying to tell a superhero story in an original way. The muted response to this I've seen from audiences heartens me.

Felix Quinonez: If we're just talking about the opening weekend, then I would say this is a great result. Sure, it could have and maybe should have been higher, but $166 million in three days is pretty amazing. It's in the top 10 opening weekends, and it set new records for a DC property, Warner Bros, and for the month of March. But that just shows that people were excited for it. How it holds up next weekend will depend on what they actually thought about the movie. And I don't think it's looking good for Batman v Superman.

I still haven't seen the movie, so I can't pass judgement on the quality of it. But that alone says a lot. I'm a huge DC comics fan - Superman is my favorite - and yet I felt absolutely no desire to rush out and see it on its opening weekend. The fact is, to me, none of the trailers looked great. I wasn't a fan of Man of Steel and the reviews are atrocious. (29% at Rotten Tomatoes) But it doesn't seem like the people who saw it are raving about it. Its "B" cinema score is not very encouraging. Even Man of Steel had a better grade with "A-" And we all know that movie didn't hold very well at all. And I don't think Batman v Superman will do any better.

Ryan Kyle: Let's face it -- this movie was always going to open huge and $166 million is a jaw-dropping number. However, the real challenge for this critical turkey will be seeing if it has any legs. Word-of-mouth has been venomous and already about $20M-$30M has been shaved off from early Friday morning predictions of this film flying high to $190 million down to $165 million by Sunday night. I'll be fascinated to see if this film can outgross Deadpool, or if it will collapse. WB was wise moving this from the summer to March as the next two weeks are devoid of any competition. However, I still don't see that factoring into a second week drop less than 60%.

Michael Lynderey: I think it's a great number and that shouldn't be downplayed. But I also think that a film with this concept could have opened to well over $200 million (and in a wild coincidence, $200 mil was exactly my prediction). After all, if seeing Iron Man, the Hulk, and Thor together got people excited, teaming up BATMAN and SUPERMAN, two of the three biggest superheroes in American history, should be (and is) a license to print an essentially unlimited amount of money. In fact, I think if the reviews had been at, say, 50% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes instead of 30%, people who aren't that invested in the characters would have signed on and the opening would have passed $200 million.

As for the reviews, I think this film is definitely overpanned (I liked it more than the Avengers, which I wasn't a fan of). Actually, while most critics don't like it, the 29% "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" Tomatoes summary makes the movie seem a lot scarier than what the median rating for it actually is - 5 out of 10 on RT, which is not very low, especially compared to, say, 3.4 out of 10 for Fantastic Four (or look at the 6.5 out of 10 for Eddie the Eagle, which has a 77% RT rating - 29% to 77% is a huge difference; 5/10 to 6.5/10 is not, which shows you the flaw of the Tomato system).

I'm sure it'll drop big next weekend, but given the inherent fanboy heaven concept here, I think B v S will still get more than its share of rewatches in the next several weeks, especially with that quieter release schedule.