Disappointing returns for ''Superman''

It was another one of those weekends at the box office when forecasters got duped, studios started spinning, and the big numbers weren’t nearly as impressive as they appear. After opening with $21 million on Wednesday, Superman Returns grossed $52.2 mil over the three-day weekend, according to Sunday’s estimates. Its cumulative take going into the Independence Day holiday now stands at $84.2 mil. To be sure, $84.2 mil is nothing to sneeze at — unless, of course, you consider all the hype and expectations that accompanied this movie. Oh, and the fact that the flick is said to have cost Warner Bros. upwards of $300 mil. But I won’t go there just yet. I will say, however, that I think you should feel a bit sorry, dear reader and moviegoer. Shame, shame, shame. Because if more of you had gone to see Supes over the weekend, then I wouldn’t have to sit here and spend time explaining how his premiere is a disappointment.

Certainly, there is some good news to report. The $52.2 mil three-day take beats out Batman Begins‘ $48.7 mil debut last year. And… hmm, I’m trying to come up with something else on the bright side. Can’t think of much more, really. You could say that the movie’s B+ CinemaScore review from audiences is nice, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not great and it doesn’t foretell much repeat business.

Things go downhill from there. Superman Returns‘ five-day total is merely the 28th best ever. Looking at its three-day figure, among both summer bows and all-time premieres, Superman Returns doesn’t even land in the top 10. Director Bryan Singer enjoyed stronger first weekends with both of the X-Men movies he cobbled together. This year alone, Cars, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Da Vinci Code, and Ice Age: The Meltdown all debuted better. And here’s a sampling of some less-than-memorable fare with superior openings: Fantastic Four, Pearl Harbor, The Mummy Returns, The Hulk, and Scooby-Doo. Now, does that mean that people were more eager to see Scooby than Supes? Probably not. To be fair to Warner Bros., there are a lot of ”yeah, buts” here. Critics love the movie. Its three-day number is diluted because many folks went to see it before the weekend began. There’s that hefty $84.2 mil five-day number. We’re really dealing with a highly unusual seven-day weekend here, since the film opened on Wednesday and most people are vacationing through July 4th, and by then the figure should be more than $100 mil. And so on. Then again, Superman Returns was supposed to be, like, the biggest movie of the summer, and when you start thinking about how it probably needs to earn more than $600 mil worldwide to break even, well, that now seems like an even taller building to leap in a single bound.

Moving on, because I don’t want to come off as too much of a sourpuss and because there was good news elsewhere… The Devil Wears Prada surpassed predictions, earning $27 mil for No. 2. According to CinemaScore, the audience was three-quarters female and more than two-thirds over age 25. In other words, Fox’s counterprogramming ploy paid off handsomely. What’s more, this is the kind of film that can have legs for weeks to come, playing against younger- and more male-skewing movies like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Little Man, and You, Me and Dupree. Click dropped an expected 52 percent, earning $19.4 mil for No. 3. Cars continued to cruise along at No. 4, adding $14 mil to bring its domestic total to $182.1 mil, which, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com, now ranks No. 87 all time. Nacho Libre (No. 5) fell another 51 percent with $6.2 mil. And there’s a report that the long-on-the-shelf TV-comedy adaptation Strangers With Candy, distributed by ThinkFilm, opened with a super-sweet average of $22,250 on two screens, while the summer’s other environmental documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?, from Sony Pictures Classics, earned a low-octane $57,700 total in eight venues.

Overall, best bud Paul at Exhibitor Relations tells me that this weekend is up about 5.5 percent from a year ago. Indeed, 2006 is turning out a lot better than the woeful, slumpy 2005, and — pardon me while I shill for a moment — I’ll go through all the winners and losers from the first half of this beautiful year at the box office in a special story on EW.com later this week.