Thanks to patford at TCJ’s message board, we have a link to this box office status report by Simon Brew at the site loudly named Den of Geek! The news is mediocre:
Seven weeks after its release, however, and Watchmen‘s legs have all but buckled. For the weekend just gone, its seventh on release, the film brought home $199,114. More worryingly, that makes for a total take of $106,848,750 in America. It’s the 358th most successful film of all time in the US off the back of those numbers, and in 357th is Batman & Robin.
The current international take for the film, and this has been petering out too[,] … currently sits at $74,207,581, for a total worldwide gross of $181,103,123. For the sake of comparison, Batman & Robin drew over $130m overseas, for a total of $238m.
Out of Watchmen‘s receipts has to come the exhibitors’ revenues, marketing costs, distribution expenses and such like. And then there’s the film’s budget, with the most conservative suggesting that it cost $120m to bring the film to the screen in the first place. Off the back of box office returns such as Watchmen‘s, it’s perhaps unsurprising that we’re not going to be seeing a mass market R-rated comic book movie for a long time to come.
…Fortunately, for Watchmen its real money spinner is yet to come. … it’s a film that’s going to have legs for many years on the home market, and Warner Bros will no doubt keenly exploit it with special and collectors’ editions en masse over the coming decade or so. Watchmen will not, when the final numbers are totted up, be a business failure for the studio.…However, tomorrow – Friday April 24th – marks the film’s 50th day on release, and it’s just a shame that it won’t be playing for that much longer …