Superman Not Gonna Be Re-Returning?
Author: Stephen Gerding
August 15th, 2006
Fans of Singer’s reintroduction of the Man of Steel look to be in for some disappointment unless something changes drastically in the next few weeks.
It doesn’t look good. Superman Returns has already made over $340 million worldwide, but has yet to open in “key” international territories. While that sounds great at first glance, especially considering the forthcoming DVD release which should make Warner another couple hundred million, the studio claims they might just break even. That’s right, break even.
Spread the word!
- Related Articles:
August 15th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
That would suck (though for the record, this article only speculates, and has no real concrete proof that the sequel is iffy). I really enjoyed this film — it was clunky at times, but still very good.
August 15th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Wow, I can\’t believe Warner Brothers isn\’t going to make money on a movie that cost $400 million!
August 15th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Whoever wrote this article is on crack. Not even the highest estimates place it at 400 million. WITH advertising, you are looking at around 250 million. That is almost half of what this jackass is saying.
I thought it was a good movie too. It make me sad to see people try so hard to bring it down. I just don’t get it.
August 15th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
The truth is we’ll never know how much WB spent on this thing.
August 15th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Yup - only estimates. But even if you stick with a 200 million dollar production budget, that’s still on top of over 100 million that WB blew over the last decade on pre-production costs, plus marketing and Singer’s approximate 50 million payday. When you figure that studios tend to get back about half the box office take, it’s not a surprise that the WB told reporters that the flick had to pull in at least 200 million domestically before they’d even consider greenlighting a sequel.
August 15th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
Steve, that’s not what the article says though. It says 400M production budget. You can’t hold singer resposible for 10 years of development hell.
August 15th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
Who’s holding Singer responsible for that? It was a weight Warners hoped he could carry, but I haven’t seen anyone official even try to blame Singer for being unable to heft it. As a matter of fact, the only blame I’ve seen thrown on anyone was from Singer onto the WB marketing team.
August 16th, 2006 at 6:50 am
Steve’s right. Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but it occurs to me that WB used Singer for a lot of the marketing push…
Anyway, I also agree with Tae — some people just seemed to have it out for this movie for whatever odd reason. Although, like PJ’s also obnoxiously expensive King Kong, it never really reached that “must see” vibe you would need to have a huger-than-hell movie. Maybe it’s like some weird subconcious punishment/schadenfreude people are inflicting on the studios and directors for spending so much money.
August 16th, 2006 at 7:25 am
Steve, you are.
“But even if you stick with a 200 million dollar production budget, that’s still on top of over 100 million that WB blew over the last decade on pre-production costs, plus marketing and Singer’s approximate 50 million payday.”
August 16th, 2006 at 7:32 am
Andrew, you might be right. I don’t know where these people were during Titanic. It was a much worse movie than SR or KK, but especially on the internet, people had a hate on for this movie before they ever saw it.
And as a pre-emptive strike, you can’t blame the trailers because 1) they were pretty decent, especially the later ones.
2) Lady in the Water had ASS trailers, but it was actually pretty good.
August 16th, 2006 at 7:37 am
I are what? Singer got the deal he could - more power to him. It’s on the heads of the execs who paid him what they did to steal him from Fox.
August 16th, 2006 at 8:29 am
Tae — Man, that’s so true. Titanic was worse than SR and Jackson’s KK. Although, I have to say, I thought SR’s trailers were pretty weak, but they did a good job with the posters.
Anyway, much more mediocre movies than SR have made a lot more money, so, it’s kind of fascinating what happened.
I’m still dumbfounded about how much money WB spent (that goes for the studio that did Jackson’s KK, too…was it Sony…?) and expected to make their money back, though.
August 16th, 2006 at 8:30 am
Steve, you are holding him responsible for the 100+ million that was incurred BEFORE singer was involved.
Let’s not turn this into an Abbot and Costello routine.
August 16th, 2006 at 8:50 am
Andrew, Universal did Kong.
It kills me that they all spent so much money, but only up to the release date. It’s like no one believes in follow up advertising. A little of that would have gone a LONG WAY for Superman Returns.
“See the movie all the critics are talking about”
“The number one superhero returns in this summer’s number 1 box office draw”
blah blah. Hype the shit out of it to go WITH word of mouth. Look what it did for the penguins!
August 16th, 2006 at 9:16 am
That’s blatantly untrue. He’s only responsible for whatever he ran over budget by, and even then his culpability is limited by the fact that he had to get Warner’s apoproval to spend it. Doesn’t change the fact that for some reason WB thought that they could recoup enough of the nearly $400 million they were spending on the franchise with the first movie alone. I couldn’t give a flying shit who directed it - the fact is that for whatever reason, the flick just didn’t perform to WB’s expectations.
You first.