‘Watchmen’’s opening weekend: $55.7 million (estimated)

A friend of mine told me that when he saw the movie there were some guys dressed up like Rorschach ... just like RHPS, I think it's wonderful but can't go very well at the box-office.
Here in Italy is in first position, but didn't go very well either.

Wait, wait, so the L.A. Times chose not one, but two 16 year old boys to represent the audience of a rated R movie based on a graphic novel that peaked in popularity years before they were born?

That is kinda weird. Did they also interview two six year old kids they found wandering through Toys R Us about the Michael Bay Transformers movie? After all, almost two thirds of that movie's audience was made up of men aged between 8 and 45.

The article is poor on so many levels.

First, the premise: that Watchers has underperformed.
Underperformed according to who?

Allan Horn, the studio Lord High Mucky-Muck and Grand Poobah, addressed a substantial industry group in Palm Springs the week before the opening and said he was looking for 'around $60M' opening weekend. Horn would have had access to the studio internal predicts so the movie did as well as the studio thought it would.

Second, the comparison: Watchmen didn't do as well as Dark Knight.

Watchmen was an R rated opening in March. Dark Knight was a fabulously successful summer PG. They aren't even remotely comparable and that isn't how industry professional do their comparisons. You always compare apples to apples. (More people watch TV at 8PM than at 11PM. You always compare shows in the same timeslot e.g. SNL isn't a failure because it didn't outdraw American Idol.)

300 was a March R and Watchmen didn't do as well as 300. True. But 300 was the most successful March opening R in history. Is Watchmen to be deemed a failure because it is "only" the second biggest R opening in March in history?

In fact it is probably one of the biggest March openings in history. I haven't looked it up but, excepting 300, I can't remember a March opening this big since Ice Age and Ice Age was a G.

Seems to me (as noted above) that for a March movie, (no "summer" blockbuster) and a movie that was known ahead not to be total and complete non-stop action (those movies, especially if rated PG-13 seem to gross the most)---that The Watchmen did well. The negative articles were unfortunate and, as those above mentioned...based on what exactly? The movie has developed characters, is not one speed fits all and is an adult movie. It's also not a mainstream "comic"--even though a popular graphic novel. The lower box office numbers might point to a better movie than many that get higher numbers, actually.

It's also worth pointing out that Watchmen appears to be doing well overseas, too. It's total worldwide take so far is $86 million, which is definitely putting it on track to make a profit.

Just to put it in perspective. The current projections put Watchmen at coming in at around $165M domestic (as Alex Knapp pointed out, only a part of the whole).
This is within a few percentage points of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. Similar budgets to Watchmen and both released within the last few years.

Anybody heard any talk about them being failures?