Box-office results, critical opinion and audience support be damned, Warner Bros. is still prepared to move forward with a sequel to Green Lantern despite the film’s poor initial performance reports The Hollywood Reporter‘s Pamela McClintock. Warner Bros. president of domestic distribution Dan Fellman told the site that the movie is settling in, pointing out that fanboy pics often see a significant drop-off in their second weekends.
Of course, he’s right, films such as this do traditionally see steep declines in their second weekends due to front-loaded opening weekends, but they also have more impressive opening weekends as well as show greater staying power. The 65% drop this weekend for Green Lantern is the largest drop among the three superhero films released this year (Thor [47%], X-Men: First Class [56%]) and considering it also had the weakest opening of the three ($53 million) that isn’t really a good sign that the audience is ready to support it.
However, the studio only faces a couple of options. The first is to reboot the franchise three to five years down the line, tossing out the $300 million invested in it already. Or, move forward with what they have and attempt to improve the second film dramatically. I guess what we’re looking at is go the Incredible Hulk route of the Fantastic Four route. Problem is, neither of those franchises necessarily proved to be big winners.
Green Lantern is currently going to struggle to hit $125 million at the domestic box-office and has so far made only $16 million overseas where it still has yet to be released in all territories.
Personally I don’t blame Warner Bros. for moving forward with Green Lantern 2. The first film got the origin story junk out of the way and people will still probably catch in on DVD and Blu-ray if they decide not to see it in theaters. This way they don’t have to revisit that portion of the story again and can move on to, hopefully, more interesting things.
Back in October 2010, Deadline had a report that Green Lantern scribes Marc Guggenheim, Michael Green and Greg Berlanti were already working on the sequel with a treatment expected to be in by last Christmas. The site’s source said, “They’re working round the clock on [a script for The Flash] now. Also, the three of them are working on the treatment for the sequel to the Green Lantern at the same time. All of which will be in by Christmas.”
You ready for more Green Lantern? Will you give the sequel a chance even if you didn’t like the first one?
