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Box Office Tracking: Alan Moore’s Curse Won’t Keep Watchmen From Topping $60 Million

Posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 by Steve Mason

watchmen blue glow

Watchmen (Warner Bros) has followed a long and winding road, passing through the hands of some remarkable directors like Terry Gilliam (The Fisher King), Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler) and Paul Greengrass (United 93), before landing in the lap of the mastermind behind 2004’s stunning re-imagining of Dawn of the Dead and 2007’s March blockbuster 300. From the moment that the first trailer for Zack Snyder’s $120M comic book adaptation made its debut at midnight screenings of The Dark Knight in July, this has been a sure-fire mega-hit. Now, the big screen version of the 1986 graphic novel will be unleashed on Friday.

The original comic was written by Alan Moore and the lead artist was Dave Gibbons. The collaborators have radically different views of Snyder’s film adaptation. The latter has publicly expressed confidence in Snyder. Gibbons reveals to Wired magazine that at one point Joel Silver owned the film rights to Watchmen and that the producer was insistent that Arnold Schwarzenegger should play Dr. Manhattan. (That would have potentially been an unintentional disaster movie.)

The artist says although he never had much to do with previous attempts to make the movie, “I’ve been quite involved with the Zack Snyder one. I introduced myself to him at the U.K. premier of 300, and right from the very beginning we kind of hit it off, and I really had that gut feeling that he was going to do it properly. And I must say everything that I’ve seen since has only increased my confidence, to the point that I just think it’s a wonderfully fortuitous piece of timing and the right man at the right place at the right time.”

Moore, however, is very different kind of dude. On one hand, his story Watchmen has been named one of the top 100 English language novels ever written by Time magazine, ranking alongside Harper Lee, John Steinbeck, George Orwell and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Simultaneously, he reportedly considers himself to be a warlock and has placed a curse on Snyder’s movie. The writer tells the LA Times that his philosophy about Hollywood: “It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The Watchmen film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I for one am sick of worms.”

A number of Moore-written comics have made the jump to the big screen, including V for Vendetta (excellent movie), From Hell (a mess), Constantine (more of a mess) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (complete disaster), and he claims that he has never seen any of them. According to its author, his classic graphic novel Watchmen is “inherently unfilmable.”

It will take all of Moore’s warlock powers to keep WATCHMEN from cracking $60M this weekend

So, it is Zack Snyder vs. Alan Moore’s curse. Warlock or not, the industry pre-release tracking is sky high. In surveying my normal studio contacts Wednesday, the lowest prediction I could find was for a $55M opening weekend. One exec at a competing studio thinks that $70M-$75M is “in the bag,” but I’m going with a number a few ticks lower. The 163 minute running time will give the movie fewer showtimes overall and that sort of running time generally hurts late show business. I’m calling for $63M for 3 days.

If that number hits, Watchmen would post the all-time #3 March opening, trailing only Snyder’s 300 ($70.8M) and Ice Age: The Meltdown ($68M). It would also be the all-time fourth-best 1st quarter opening for Hollywood also finishing behind 2004’s The Passion of the Christ ($83.8M).

Curse…Schmurse.

FINAL PREDICTION FOR MARCH 6-8
1. NEW – Watchmen (Warner Bros) - $63M
2. Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail (Lionsgate) - $11.5M
3. Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) - $9M
4. Taken (Fox) - $7M
5. Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience (Disney) - $6.75M
6. He’s Just Not That Into You (Warner Bros) - $4.2M
7. Paul Blart: Mall Cop (Sony) - $3.9M
8. Coraline (Focus) - $3.2M
9. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Diney) - $3.1M
10. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (Fox) - $2.1M

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  • I'm pretty sure Moore is joking when he calls himself a warlock and places curses.
  • Beast
    I'm pretty sure he's not.
  • Actually he's not. He's a fucking kook who worships a Snake God.
  • No, I distinctly remembering him saying those are his beliefs, even though he knows its completely bullshit.
    Yup, see I'm right:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2002/feb/02/scienc...
  • yeah dude, that's not cool to call someone a "kook" for having different beliefs. There are people out there who think Christians are kooks for worshipping Jesus.
  • I wouldn't be too sure about that Miyamoto.....


    I wouldn't be too sure.

    I hope this is a success though, visually this film looks amazing..let's just hope it can tell a good story now.
  • I'm pretty sure he's seen one of them at least.
  • jobless
    im hoping for $70+million.

    i'm sure there will be parts that do not live up to the graphic novel because it is film. I think the runtime of the motion comics combined was like 5 or 6 hours, so things are going to be left out.

    but yeah it is a long movie, but hopefully they take down that god awful madea crap and put it on more screens...everyone go see it!
  • $63 million seems about right. At first I thought it should definitely bring in alot more but 63M is good enough. Let's hope this movie is as good as everyone says it is.
  • Agreed
  • The metacritic roundup (53) isn't being to kind to it... but ever since that first epic trailer I've decided not to miss this one. If not solely as a lover of great special effects.
  • AfroVince
    Your not biased at all. I want this film to succeed amazingly. I've been counting down the days. But your portrayal of Moore was either: a) not enough information b) biased or c) You're repeating what you have heard without doing the research. Don't let the frenzy of the hype skew your journalism.
  • AfroVince
    Enter text right here!And Yes he is a warlock.

    But, Can you blame him for his attitude towards Hollywood?

    They tend to butcher art.
  • I know, I agree with him, too.
  • Constantine wasn't based on a Moore-written comic. Moore created the character of John Constantine in Swamp Thing, but he never wrote 'Hellblazer'. The Constantine-gets-cancer story that the film uses was written by Garth Ennis
  • Beat me to the nerdy comic correction. Nice.
  • B33
    V For Vendetta (Acceptable solely as a film. Horrible adaption that does little to respect the source material).
  • yeah it was awful!
  • I liked V for Vendetta, never read the comic though.

    People should stop complaining about film adaptations, they are bound to be interpreted differently. Films often do not compare to their book equivalents, it's a different medium, the story will always be different to some degree.

    And yes some adaptations are better than others, same with every other films.
  • If anyone wants to get a nice portrayal of how odd Alan Moore is, I suggest you read the beginning of the first issue of Transmetropolitan. While it was only the character's APPEARANCE that was supposed to be inspired by Moore (with his personality and everything else after he finally loses all his grizzly hair being inspired by Hunter S. Thompson), from what I've read about Moore, the general feel of the character is very similar to him.
  • he was criticizing the sheep mentality of hollywood, its inability to branch outward in creativity, and consumers' rank n file consumption of its products.

    and can you really say he was wrong? I'd say approximately half of the film news we've received over the last month has been A) a remake/reboot/sequel B) movie based on a comic C) a horror movie.

    I understand that films cost a lot more, and the risk factor of botching one is much, much higher. this ends up stunting creativity because studios are going bank on what they know makes money. although his critique on Hollywood has truth to it, I still KNOW watchmen is going to kick major ass.
  • i think Moore may have mixed in some eye of newt by accident and messed up his curse.
  • stathiz
    V for Vendetta was NOT an excellent movie.
  • He has been working on an 1,000 page How-to-do magic book for some time now, so while his magic may not work, I'm guessing 70+ million, he is very serious about.
  • Wow, a Watchman directed by Terry Gilliam in visual style of Brazil... That's could have been something for the history books.
  • DOUCHE BAGS APLENTY
    To me it seemed like the hype train for Watchmen crescendoed a couple of months ago.
  • First post for this topic and people are already flaming over religion.

    I <3 the internet. lol
  • Well of course I believe that anyone is entitled to believe in what they want. That's a right every human being has. However, one is ignorant to not admit that science has disproved some of historical man's lesser intellectual ideas. Imagination is the hallmark of religion, which has strangely enough shaped the course of civilization. If there was a god, whatever that really means, the most logical explanation for me would be an inter-stellar being capable of rapid movement across our galaxy and perhaps between others. The amount of energy needed to sustain this is practically immeasurable for us.
  • I REALLY wasn't trying to have a discussion about theism.

    Ok, yes, you're facts are right and all. If that's why you don't believe in God, good for you. I go on blind faith, Sorry to say that I feel comfortable doing that.
  • Ok I'm done now. I'm sorry you all had to experience this.
  • B33
    Because an individual is automatically a "kook" when they hold a belief you aren't familiar with or hold disdain for, correct?
  • Because lets assume that someone who makes comments on the internet "automatically" came to their conclusions throughout the course of their typing, and has never had any time to previously think about it, correct?
  • And yet I'm sure a lot of "open-minded" people in the world think the idea that God exists is "stupid" too, so it goes both ways.
  • Well, logically the idea of a god made sense at a certain time in human being's intellectual evolution. With the basic findings in the fields of astronomy, history, and anthropology, we have come to see the ridiculous similarities and archetypes throughout all religions. In a way, the idea of god is stupid because it preys on the basic human fears that plagued people in a primordial, undeveloped, and unconnected world, a world that was believed to be flat and alone in the heavens. The concept of an expanding universe would be seen as heresy in such an ancient wasteland. Let's not even get into the historical and sociological context within which all religious texts were written. Or the contradictions held within them. Just plain silly.
  • Ok, well I was just bringing the point up because, while I agree that saying Moore's a "fucking kook" is a little harsh, he has just as much of a right to think that than you do to think that it's "just plain silly" to believe in God. And while I do believe in God, I'm Agnostic so a lot of what you said I do agree with.

    I was just saying that there are strong negative opinions about every sort of belief, and that there tend to be a lot of people who yell at others for not accepting less-known beliefs and then turn around and bash people for believing in God. So those people are hypocrites.

    I wasn't going against what B33 said, I was just adding another layer to it.
  • jobless
    a kook is someone that does not know how to surf
  • I LOVE Alan Moore and i hope he never changes. He's crazy and I love it.
  • V for Vendetta was excellent, I agree with Steve on that. Different from the book? Yes. People fall in love with comparing film adaptations and their source material but should not really even bother, for plenty of obvious reasons.

    However -- and though he seems like a good dude and he at least has a distinctive look to his work -- Zack Snyder being labeled a "mastermind" strikes me as kind of ridiculous.
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