Movies With Butter

In my article about this summer’s $250M productions, I wrote that “Battleship”’s foreign box office was just a couple million ahead of “John Carter”’s after two weeks in release.

Well, another week has passed, and “Battleship”’s total is now at $171M, a million behind “John Carter” after the same number of weeks.

That’s not good. “John Carter” finished its foreign run at $200M. “Battleship” will probably end up a few million below that.

Peter Berg’s alien invasion movie won’t open in the U.S. until May 18th, sandwiched between “The Avengers” and “Men in Black III.” All three films have overlapping demographics, which is the action and scifi crowd.

“Battleship” might have trouble topping “The Avengers” in its third weekend. It’ll surely be crushed by “Men in Black III” in the following weekend.

On HSX, “Battleship”’s Opening Weekend Warrant is priced at H$45, and the film’s stock price is at H$108. Both of those numbers are also similar to “John Carter”’s a few weeks before its release.

I have a feeling it will do similar business to “John Carter” in the U.S., which opened with $30M and finished with $69M.

All in all, it’s not gonna be pretty for Universal. Disney announced a $200M write-down for “John Carter.” I think that number will be half as much after it hits the home video and TV markets. “Battleship” is looking like it’ll have a similarly huge write-down for Universal.

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