MOTHER PUSS BUCKET

dcu:

I’m always amazed when people refer to Superman Returns as a box office failure, when it made more than Batman Begins which is garnered as a huge success by Warner Bros.

My theory? Superman Returns failed in one major area Batman Begins did not: Merchandise.

My theory? Batman Begins had a budget of $150,000,000 (estimated), while Superman Returns had a budget of $209,000,000 (estimated). The difference made between the two is only $19 million, while the difference spent between the two is $59 million. When you factor in the millions of dollars Warner Brothers had already spent on failed Superman relaunches, including Tim Burton’s aborted Superman Lives project (on which WB dropped $5 million just for Burton’s pay-or-play contract, and which involved a script by Kevin Smith and getting as far on production as costume tests and printed teaser posters), you can see how much baggage Superman Returns had already.

Merchandising was a factor, I’m sure, but the fact that Warners had already spent enough money to make another movie by the time Returns went into production meant that it couldn’t just do well, it had to do amazingly well to recoup all those costs, and it just didn’t reach that level. It’s unfair, sure, and maybe unfortunate to fans of that movie that it was never really given a fair chance, but the bottom line is always dollar signs.

Personal note: I think the Superman franchise would have had a far better shot at success if it wasn’t so slavishly devoted to continuing the story from the first two Christopher Reeve movies. Superman needed a fresh start, a complete reboot, and what we got instead was a 20-years-too-late third movie in a series that already had a third movie. Bryan Singer wasn’t just paying homage to Richard Donner’s Superman, he was trying to recreate it in every way possible, while weirdly recasting the main roles too young (except Kevin Spacey, who would have been the perfect Luthor in any Superman movie) and refusing to let the main character take advantage of the advances in special effects since his last major film outing - okay, we know, he’s good at lifting stuff. How ‘bout giving him something to punch?