20 June 2011

Green Lantern's Mildly Bright Box Office Take




Its pretty obvious to anyone reading this site that I have been pulling for Green Lantern to be a huge hit. Well, I will just cut to the chase and say that once again DC has failed to win over the mainstream in a way that Marvel has consistently done. And I was majorly off in my prediction.

I will concede that Green Lantern is a bit of a tough sell. Its full of odd creatures and zaniness that can easily seem goofy to the uninitiated. In addition, "Green Lantern" isn't really a guy but a title. This distinction fueled some people's confusion over why the movie Lantern, Hal Jordan, wasn't black like in the Justice League cartoon which focused on John Stewart. On the other hand, the Green Lantern comic as of late has consistently been DC's biggest seller. There are dozens of rich characters from which to draw and thousands of Green Lanterns. I had such high hopes that the movie would tap into the Green Lantern's potential. It kinda didn't. Additionally, it was massacred by the critics when it was really more along the lines of an X-Men 1 or Fantastic Four than a Catwoman or Jonah Hex. And despite what audiences heard, the movie looked amazing.

Anyway, GL opened to $52.6 million, less than Thor or X-Men: First Classes openings. Its still possible the movie could have an amazing run if it were to catch on with the family crowd, but even then $150 million is looking like a challenge at this point. The problem is that of the 3, Green Lantern was the most expensive. So, while calling this a flop is ridiculous, we have yet to see how this will affect DC's grand schemes to develop its own movie universe... I am sure there will be plenty to report on over the next weeks.

X-Men continues its pace in accord with X-Men (2000) looking at a $150 million finish. Thor continues to slowly lose its thunder maintaining a trajectory of $180+ million. How will Captain America fair in this super saturated summer? Stay tuned.




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