Big-budget action movie "Superman Returns" raked in an estimated US$21 million from its debut at
The opening tally fell short of a record but proved a solid start for the comic book adventure ahead of a holiday weekend, box office analysts said.
"We're flying," said Warner Bros. domestic distribution chief Dan Fellman. "We have this long wonderful weekend ahead of us and the balance of the summer."
Warner Bros. has a lot riding on "Superman Returns," which stars Brandon Routh as the Man of Steel. The studio spent more than US$200 million to make the movie and tens of millions more to promote it, hoping to rekindle a franchise that all but died in 1987 after the last "Superman" film flopped at box offices.
The 18 million figure ranks it No. 11 on the list of all-time Wednesday openers, just below "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," according to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations Co., Inc.
"It's a very solid number," said Exhibitor Relations President Paul Dergarabedian. "For this movie, it's not about breaking an opening weekend record. I think it's about maximizing their playing time" in upcoming weeks.
The Tuesday-Wednesday opening total puts "Superman Returns" just below US$21.5 million grossed by "War of the Worlds," which starred Tom Cruise and opened ahead of the U.S. Independence Day holiday last year
Boxofficeguru.com's Gitesh Pandya recalled that "War of the Worlds" opened similarly to "Superman Returns." He also compared it to last year's Warner Bros. hit, "Batman Begins," noting that film's Wednesday opening of US$15 million accounted for 22 percent of its total gross through its debut weekend.
Pandya predicted "Superman Returns" might do the same on a percentage basis, and if that happened, then the movie's five-day opening would range between US$90 million and US$100 million. He called the Wednesday number a "strong start."
The No. 1 midweek opener of all time was "Spider-Man 2," which hit theaters in 2004 on the Wednesday before the July 4 holiday and spun a first-day gross of US$40 million at domestic box offices.
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"Superman Returns" is regarded as similar to an original movie because it targets young men as its core audience, and many were not even alive in the late 1970s and 1980s when the previous modern "Superman" movies, starring Christopher Reeve, played in theaters.
Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc., hopes to turn audiences of the Reeve movies into fans of this new "Superman" and get them back to theaters in the future.
"Superman Returns" has garnered generally positive reviews from movie critics, and Fellman said that early exit interviews from moviegoers were positive.
"We are back and back in a big way," Fellman said.
He noted that the last film in the series, 1987's "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace," took in only US$15.6 million throughout its entire run in theaters.
The first three movies in the franchise were "Superman," "Superman II" and "Superman III" in 1978, 1980 and 1983, respectively
