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In for a penny in for a pound: Despite bad reviews, and a 66 percent decline at the box office this weekend, Warner Bros. is still planning a sequel to GREEN LANTERN, THR reports. A WB spokesman admits that the studio was “somewhat disappointed” with the box office, but they still believe in it as a franchise.

GL had the same kind of box office drop off as THE HULK, and that had a sequel, so this isn’t entirely nutty. In addition, Warners has really invested a lot in trying to get their DC characters to the same level of box office reliability as Marvel, so they really need to stick with their game plan here. Of course, we’ve all had our say over and over and over as to what they should do next time, so hopefully they read each and every internet post about GREEN LANTERN the movie…that is sure to solve eveyrthing!

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1 COMMENT

  1. The Incredible Hulk wasn’t a sequel to the Ang Lee Hulk; it was a reboot (or attempted reboot, perhaps). Totally new cast and creative team, and the origin was even different (more in line with the TV series than the movie).

    When Marvel talks about the Avengers movie, The Hulk isn’t treated as part of that same universe, even, while Incredible Hulk is — Along with Iron Man, Thor, and Cap, of course — despite the fact that they’re recasting Banner/Hulk for a second time.

  4. “GL had the same kind of box office drop off as THE HULK, and that had a sequel”

    As Gordon notes, that is not correct. Marvel’s Hulk film is *not* a sequel to the Ang Lee Hulk. That’s like saying Batman Begins was a sequel to Batman & Robin. One followed the other, certainly, but that’s about it.

  7. WB pretty much made these same kind of PR noises after Superman Returns underperformed at the box office. How did that turn out?

  9. I liked BOTH Hulks. A lot. And I think they both grow on you.

    I don’t think GL will do the same, but they did such a nice job building up Sinestro that I think they really have to go with it.

  10. I enjoyed the first GL, but I think a sequel centered around a battle with Mark Strong’s Sinestro (far and away the best part of the first movie) would be about 1000 times better. The only reason the box office for GL is disappointing is because of the ludicrous amount of money they spent making it. Pair the sequel with a more sensible budget and I think it could definitely be successful.

  11. @Scratchie: From Box Office Mojo

    Hulk:

    Production Budget: $137 million
    Domestic Box Office: $132 million
    Total Worldwide Box Office: $245 million

    Incredible Hulk:

    Production Budget: $150 million
    Domestic Box Office: $134 million
    Total Worldwide Box Office: $263 million

    So actually, Incredible Hulk made marginally more money than Hulk, but as a percentage of its production budget, performed worse.

  12. I’m not sure what the best move would be to make for the DC film slate. The problem is, Warner/ DC doesn’t seem to know either.

    Hopefully, they decide that going the Marvel route isn’t on the cards. Fans should realize that it doesn’t mean that DC can’t do a JLA movie. It just means that DC need not try to lead into it through solo films first.

    Green Lantern, for all it’s flaws, showed glimmers of a much vaster world. Trying to connect Superman with his rights in limbo, Batman the unquestionable current breadwinner, Wonder Woman who DC is too scared to do anything with but too finacially obligated to do without, the Flash who seems like the comics line will treat as an afterthought since the Barry Allen project in comics resembles the Hal Jordon experiment in film despite Flash being the more known name, and Martian Manhunter who seems to be in story exile would prove far too much for Warner/DC.

    The goldmine that is the DCAU has only been touched recently with Young Justice which some fans can’t get past the name enough to actually fairly judge.
    Why Warner/ DC doesn’t think of grand plans for their IP’s across multiple media outlets is puzzling.
    Some will say that that’s what they’re doing starting with the GL film but the execution shows that they’re not think as broadly as they could.
    If they were, there would be a Flash anmated series in the vain of the 90’s Batman and Superman shows.
    There would be screenshots every week for an upcoming Suicide Squad video game written Gail Simone and John Ostrander.
    Martain Manhunter would have moved to Vertigo.
    The Batman line of books wouldn’t be reverting back to a dozen books with 10 of them featuring Bruce.

    For now, Warner/ DC should focus on getting Superman right and proper or use more obscure characters who have a simple enough hook (ie. Hawkman from Geoff Johns run, Deathstroke as assassin with morals, Catwoman as impulsive thief with a good heart, Lois Lane as top news reporter in a world of misinformation).

  13. Good for WBs. They have the origin out of the way, they learn from their errors and then come back with a nice sequel. Kudos to them.

    the Tiki

  14. Well, with the animated show, the DVD releases, the merchandise and toys, plus learning lessons from the first movie, there’s a good chance the second one could be better than the first. Remember, the Star Trek movie franchise didn’t really take off until “Wrath of Khan”, and the James Bond franchise really took off with “Goldfinger”. I’d say now that the intros are all done, we can get some fun action in the sequel!

  15. I’m puzzled why WB isn’t doing Disney/Pixar-quality animated feature films featuring the DC characters. Instead, they release a bunch of bland straight-to-DVD animated stuff without much fanfare. It’s not as if animated films don’t rake in piles of cash for their studios. Is there a company line on that?

    Same goes for Marvel.

  19. I’m puzzled why WB isn’t doing Disney/Pixar-quality animated feature films featuring the DC characters.

    That animation isn’t cheap. Some Googling found that TOY STORY 3 had a budget of $200 million. As for CARS 2:

    Pixar won’t say what the budget for “Cars 2” was, but its settings are so rich in detail that the film required three times as much computer processing power to complete as the company’s previous film, “Toy Story 3.”

    Without Pixar’s reputation, animated films about DC superheroes could be dismissed unseen as juvenile-only material.

    SRS

  20. Based on the first day receipts, even with horrific reviews, there’s an audience for a Green Lantern movie. When the word of mouth after day one matched the reviews it started tanking hard.

    There is every reason to believe a _good_ GL flick would make money. Can the studio remove themselves from the film making process long enough for a good film to result is another question entirely.

  22. As I understand it — and I could be completely wrong — a fair amount of the expense of CGI animation is building the CGI stuff in the first place. Once you’ve created it, manipulating it more isn’t as expensive as doing the whole job from scratch.

    Having created so much stuff in the first movie, perhaps a sequel can have significantly lower production costs.

  23. Translation: “We have invested so much in this already (CGI, marketing) that we might as well continue with another one. Besides, following the Wonder Woman pilot error, with probably only one more good Batman movie left, and the Superman franchise up up in the air, we figure this is the best hand of cards we’re going to get to play for a while.”

  25. @Kurt: Exactly right. Warner spent a fortune in time/money on the sets and props and costumes and makeup for GL. They did them digitally, but it’s still very much like making them in real life: a lot of time spent on fairly expensive creative talent. Now that they have all those assets built – and hopefully backed up :) – the cost to use them will only go down.

  26. I agree this is most likely nothing more than a face-saving announcement from WB and we will not see a sequel any time soon. Studios are not in the habit of throwing good money after bad. Given that the film had a disappointing opening weekend, underperforming overseas numbers, poor critical reception, and a huge second weekend drop, there is really nothing the studio can point to that would suggest a sequel has any chance to outperform the original and justify another $150 million + investment. I expect WB is done with GL for a while.

  27. it could work if they get a really great sci-fi director…but are there any great, sci-fi auteur’s out there to recruit?

  28. I totally disagree with that io9 article. Does the author really think that the *only* interesting story that can be told with Sinestro is him going bad in the first place? That’s ridiculous. Heck, I’d prefer a sequel that didn’t have to waste eons of screen time on yet another origin-type story and just went straight into the action.

  29. While it’s nice that they spent a shit-load of money on the initial CGI and now can do them more cheaply for a sequel, a lot of it looked like crap. The CGI’d costumes in particular. Are we sure we want to see this version of Oa/The GLC/The Guardians on screen again? I think i’d rather do a Hulk movie thing and get it right (or closer to right) the second time.

  30. Eh, are there any sequels out there that cost less money than the original film?

    It’s the toys, people.