With the weight of Warner Bros.’ summer hopes on its shoulders, "Superman Returns" debuted late Tuesday night and continued strong, if not phenomenally, for a total of $21 million at the box office through Wednesday night.
The official figure released by WB was actually $21,037,000, with Bryan Singer‘s superhero pic riding a Kryptonian publicity wave into 3,915 theaters (and 76 IMAX 3D arenas) nationwide. Buoyed by a smart decision to move up the release date to the Wednesday before the Fourth of July weekend, "Superman Returns" has four more days to go to capitalize on holiday weekend moviegoers.
"Superman Returns" soars, but how high?
Considering its notoriously sky-high production budget ($260 million, plus marketing costs), opening to $21 mil is decent, but not nearly as profitable as WB would have liked. Still, it ranks as the eighth-highest Wednesday opening in history, behind films like "Star Wars: Episode I" ($28.5 M), "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" ($34.5 M), and the record-holder from 2004, "Spider-Man 2" ($40.4 M).
Spidey still reigns supreme at the all-time Wednesday opener box office
That’s not to say "Supes" doesn’t still have a chance to earn more-than-respectable returns in the next few days and beyond. WB’s summer comic-book blockbuster entry from last year, "Batman Begins," earned only $15.1 million during its Wednesday opening and seemed doomed to a box office drop off and a disappointing overall take. That pic, however, surprised many by staying strong through its subsequent theatrical run and came out big with over $200 million in domestic ticket sales.
Can Superman bring home another Batman-sized hit for WB?
Like "Batman Begins," "Superman Returns" is the resurrection of a comic book-to-film series and scored with most critics ("Batman" earned a Tomatometer of 83 percent, while "Superman" is currently at a lower, but still Fresh, 76 percent).
Numbers-watchers are in agreement that "Superman Returns" needs to make its mark in the next week, before Disney’s hugely anticipated sequel, "The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest," diverts the minds, hearts, and pocketbooks of the precious moviegoing public.
