Tale of the Tortoise and the Hare

It doesn't take a genius or a friendship with Jeff Robinov's personal secretary to know that Warner Bros. was hoping Singerman would be the number one film of 2006. When they greenlit the film back in 2004, they were hoping Singerman would see "Spider-Man numbers." They in fact needed that. But reality kicked in before Singerman opened and most execs realized it not only wasn't going to make huge dollars, it probably wasn't going to be the #1 film either.

Early tracking indicated POTC:DMC was going to be a monster. Warners pushed up Singerman's release date to give the film a better head start. When Warner's own tracking data showed an ambivalence among general audiences, they rushed a new version of Singerman's broadcast trailer into circulation, recut to emphasize more action beats and to bury the retarded woe-is-me characterization that dominated all previous versions. They also needed to "butch" him up a bit.

Basically, they put lipstick on a pig and hoped audiences wouldn't notice.

It's almost poetic justice to see the one film that had Warners in such a reactionary tizzy for the last four months accomplish what they so wanted and needed from Singerman: become the #1 film of the year. As of August 25, 2006, 50 days into its release, POTC:DMC has grossed more than $404 million dollars at the domestic box office, effectively breaking Spider-Man's record for the same. Not only did it double Singerman's domestic sales, it beat its combined worldwide tally with just its domestic box office sales alone. We're talking a slaughter of epic proportions here folks.

Although it was a mixed bag critically, audiences are still eating up POTC:DMC like the cannibals in the flick itself, and the film is still pulling in million-dollar days at the box office. As of this writing, it is the sixth highest grossing film of all time on the domestic charts (Singerman is #75), and it's expected to become only the third film in history to break a billion dollars worldwide (behind "Titanic" and "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King") within the next few weeks.

We here at Singer's Superman Sucks would like to remind our loyal readers that "Pirates of the Caribbean" is what Hollywood would call a successful film franchise. Despite the protestations of film critics everywhere, audiences don't seem to care if a film is based on an amusement park ride or a comic book, provided it has a charismatic cast in a compelling or entertaining story that tickles their fancy. Singerman apparently had none of the above, which is unfortunate considering it was a film supposedly about Superman.