Watching Watchmens Box Office

Watchmen, to put it simply enough, is a comic-book movie. Tougher to state is what kind of comic-book movie it'll be at the box office. 

The year's first big buzz film—if you don't count Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience, and as you now know, you shouldnot opens midnight Friday at more than 1,600 theaters, moving onto 3,600-plus locations for the full weekend.

Will it open Batman big? 300 strong? Incredible Hulk all right? A look at the scenarios:

1. Watchmen Is Batman: As long as you're talking the pre-Dark Knight movies, and don't adjust for inflation, then, yeah, sure, Watchmen has the potential to party like it's 1989. Guestimates from those box-office analysts still willing to guess after last weekend's Jonas Brothers debacle range from a $50-million-ish opening to a $70-million-ish opening.

2. Watchmen Is 300: This is the dream, $70 million-debut storyline for Warners, which backed the reputedly $120-$150 million movie and then wrangled with Fox to release it.

Like Watchmen, and unlike Hollywood's other top-grossing comic-book movies, 300 was R-rated, based on a limited-run comic, wholly lacking in name-brand actors and directed by Zack Snyder. Should the comparisons stop there? To be on the safe side, probably, according to Paul Dergarabedian of Media By Numbers and Hollywood.com. "When something has only happened once in cinematic history," Dergarabedian says of 300's success, "you just can't in a cavalier way say [Watchmen is] going to make $90 million in one weekend." 

3. Watchmen Is X-Men: Box Office Guru's Gitesh Pandya likes this comparison because, he writes in an email, "there is a huge built-in audience of fans." Then again, while the first X-Men, which opened with $54.5 million in 2000, didn't boast much more star power than Watchmen, it did boast Wolverine. "The [Watchmen] characters are not household names," Pandya says, "so there will be a limit to its potential."

4. Watchmen Is Hulk. Or the The Incredible Hulk. Take Your Pick:  Pandya thinks the mid-50 millions like last summer's Incredible Hulk or low-60s like 2003's Hulk are possible for Watchmen. Also, like Watchmen, the Hulk movies were $100 million-plus budget behemoths.

5. Watchmen Is Wanted:  Exhibitor Relations' Jeff Bock can kinda, sorta see these movies matching up. Wanted, which debuted with $50.9 million last summer, was, after all, R-rated and not exactly based on a traditional, cape-and-cowl comic. That noted, Bock reminds in an email, "that particular R-rated action flick did have über-femme fatale Angelina Jolie, and Watchmen has, well, no one really." Still, Bock wouldn't be surprised by a $55 million, or more, Watchmen debut.

6. Watchmen Is the Jonas Brothers Concert Movie: No, the Jonas Brothers concert movie was not based on a comic, but its epic underperformance is the nightmare storyline for Warners. Fortunately, for the studio, it seems the least likely to occur.

Watchmen is said to be absolutely dominating this weekend's advance ticket sales, and while you've heard that before, this time you should be able to see the results. , which was reporting 80 sold-out Watchmen midnight screenings, said it had new safeguards in place after data from one of its exhibitors "mistakenly inflated" its report of 700 Jonas Brothers opening-weekend sell-outs.

Ultimately, the Jonas Brothers' box-office meltdown, not foreseen by many, may be helping Watchmen by tamping down expectations. "I'm not saying it's not going to do amazingly well," Dergarabedian says. "[But] I'm reticent to go out on a limb."

7. Watchmen Is Watchmen. Whatever That Is: It's longer than 300. It cost more to make than the original X-Men and 300, for that matter. It's not Batman, it's not Spider-Man, and it doesn't have a lot of room to be neither one of those guys. Or the 17 comic-book movies to gross $150 million-plus, per Box Office Mojo stats, 8, or about half, are Batman and Spider-Man movies. 

"It's kind of like The Matrix meets the comic-book movie," Dergarabedian offers. "It's sort of like a hybrid. It defies comparison."