With an estimated opening weekend of somewhere around $5 million, it’d be tough to deny that the Jonah Hex movie is a flop – but coming only a couple of months after the similarly soft The Losers, should Warner Bros. and DC Comics be worried about their cinematic future together?
Both The Losers and Jonah Hex were adapted from critically-acclaimed, if commercially-mid-level DC comics, and both were adapted into relatively-cheap movies guaranteed to make their cost back eventually (The Losers cost $25 million to make, Hex somewhere in the region of $35-65 million, depending on whether you factor in reshoots or not), but the two movies also share the unfortunate fate of being the first two movies based on DC properties to come out since the formation of DC Entertainment, and flopping.
Deadline Hollywood’s Nikki Finke reports on the damage control being done to save face:
The studio is so embarrassed that it took great pains to points out that the pic was greenlighted before Diane Nelson took over as DC Entertainment prez… As one insider tells me, “the studio looked at the movie a long time ago and wrote it off”.
While DC’s library of non-superhero properties may seem like a plus for DC Entertainment’s development in other media, it’s worth noting that the division’s first official projects seem to have learned from the fate of Jonah and Losers (Not to mention Marvel’s success), sticking with successful superhero brands Green Lantern and The Flash for movies, and Young Justice and Smallville for television.
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