"Watchmen," A Dark Tale, Lights Up Box Office'

By: Michael Cieply
Monday, March 9, 2009
NYT-The Arts, C1

This article is about how “Watchmen” made $55.7 million in ticket sales but “Tyler Perry‘s Madea Goes to Jail,” made $76.5 million, and Cieply says it makes sense, because “Watchmen” is not such a great movie. He even got a quote from a viewer: “Everyone around me liked it a lot more than I did,” said by a professor who teaches courses in genre film, television and comics at Duke University.

The film’s director, Zack Snyder, said a comment, which Cieply then makes it part of his “but” statement: “Mr. Snyder publicly fretted that too faithful a rendering of this dark tale would cause viewers to ‘slit their wrists and call it a day in their theater.’” Cieply’s “but” statement is: “The weekend‘s solid performance, at least, put aside those decades-long battle by the producer Lawrence Gordon and others to get the difficult project on screens.”

The kicker is the total number of tickets sold for the year of 2008, which is $1.9 billion, and he gives a guess as to why it went up by about 15 percent: “Since Christmas the United States box office has been unusually strong, as viewers--perhaps looking to escape bad news and diminishing prospects on the economic front--have flocked to crowds pleasers like ‘Paul Blart: Mall Cop,’ and ‘He’s Just Not That Into You.’”