First, where are all of the world conquering villians. Brainic, Darkseid, Bizarro, Metallo, just to name a few.

Secondly, why isn;t Lex the pwer broker he is in the comics.

Finally, why does it have to be a love story. Stop adding things that are unneccesary. It is a Superman. What else do you need?

Superman Returns had DVD sales of around $81 million. WB sold the television rights for about $20 million, and merchandising revenue was “more than $60 million.” So that’s $160 million dollars that WB is in the clear. Subtract the $40 million dollar advertising budget, and that leaves them $120 million dollars ahead of the game before you even begin counting box office revenue.

So for the movie to be profitable, they needed to bring in more than $150 million. The movie brought in $391 million. Let’s give the theaters a generous 25% of the box office. That leaves WB with $293 million.

In other words, on a film that cost an absurd $270 million dollars, they managed to make a clear profit of $140 million (and, technically, Australia gave them a $28 million tax break, so they actually cleared about $168 million). That’s fairly amazing, especially considering many fans didn’t like the movie.

Could that pot have been sweeter? Absolutely. For one thing, $40 million dollars of that budget comes from failed development over the last ten years. That should have been profit. The remaining budget of $230 million is ludicrous for any film. No reason that movie needed to cost more than $180 million.

All they need to do is put a sequel on a reasonable budget, make it shorter, and make sure it delivers more action. The average moviegoer isn’t as discerning as the fanboys. If they’re interested in Superman, they’ll go see the next movie whether it’s a reboot or a sequel. Nobody who’s interested will stay home because the last one wasn’t very good. The Star Wars prequels proved that.

So can we put to rest this nonsense about “Superman Returns” being a failure? Movies that fail don’t make $391 million. Movies that are mismanaged, however, can sell $391 million worth of tickets and still not meet profit expectations.

“…Superman Returns did have flaws, but wasn’t a bomb. According to Box Office Mojo it cost $270 million and made $391 million at theaters alone. That’s not counting the millions on DVD and High Def discs. That’s a $121 million dollar upside not including DVD. Not bad….”

As stated by George, and let me reiterate, when you invest $200M, you don’t expect less than steller profits of $100M or so. You don’t gamble monstrous budgets like that for minimal gross.

It did fail, not necessary financally but in a broader perspective.

No matter what the film does they get a cut from the box office gross. The film could still tank but they get x percent of the first dollars through the cinema doors.

And superman hardly opened huge – it had decent opening but it struggled to crawl its way to 200 million stateside so the theatre owners got their piece.

If the film had been in anyway shape or form successful they would have greenlit a sequel ages ago. there would have ben no dithering about about it like they have been doing.

A reboot is the only way they have a chance. There is just not an audience out there hoping for more of the same from singer and blandboy routh.

Rebooting is the only sensible thing they can do outside of not bothering making it at all but the studios need their tentpoles and if done correctly superman still has a slim shot at being a successful franchise. But it needs to be done right.

I don;t think there is a place for superman in todays world anyway. he is way to pure. Modern audience prefer their heroes a little damaged, darker and with an edge.

Superman is way to much of a boy scout.

As I understand it, a film that opens big and has no legs (like “Superman Returns”) means very slim returns for the theatre owners. They make the bulk of their cash later in the run.

Of course, the $270 million budget doesn’t factor in P&A costs, but neither does it figure in the massive amounts of money the studio reaps from merchandising the property. And, of course, regardless of whether or not DVD sales were “strong” (a rather relative term), the studio pockets all of that cash.

Given studio accounting practices, I would be shocked if Singer or Spacey collected anything from gross points.

All this simply means that yes, the film failed to live up to studio expectations, but they most certainly turned a profit. In the interest of retaining mainstream audience involvement, WB would be much wiser to simply reduce the budget to something reasonable, assert more control over the production (two thing they’re likely to do now *anyway*) and keep the same continuity.

I hated Superbaby and Super-sad-man as much as the next guy, but re-booting serves nobody but the fanboys, and Hulk has proven that ain’t enough.