Watching The Numbers

The clock is almost winding down to zero for Watchmen--How big will the opening be for the long awaited flick be...?



Garth Franklin of Dark Horizons folllows the data:

[The film] will play in an impressive 1,600 locations starting at midnight Thursday reports Reuters.

To give you an idea, that's more than double the 656 midnight shows that helped Snyder's ancient Greece actioner "300" fetch $28 million in only the first day of its $71 million opening weekend in March [2006].

To date that first-day haul for "300" was the second-highest ever for an R-rated pic, after the $42.5 million that Warners registered with 2003's "The Matrix Reloaded."

Where "Watchmen" will sit is anyone's guess right now - anticipation is certainly there though with IMAX's Web site crashing four times this week because of traffic surges by "Watchmen" fans looking for ticket information.

Fandango added on Wednesday that "Watchmen" purchases represented 90% of its advance ticket sales for this weekend, though admittedly there are no other wide openers this week.

Reviews continue to be surprisingly divisive. Rotten Tomatoes has the film at a quite mixed 65% approval rating and a quite low 6.1/10 average score with [85] reviews counted.

With Watchmen the only big weekend opener---I would think the almost 3 hour running time of the film would dampen final numbers come Monday moore than any shaky reviews...