Are R-rated comic book films dead?

Warner Bros and Marvel have both distanced themselves from any more R-rated comic book hero movies, not helped by Watchmen’s takings. Is this a bad thing?

Warner Bros' admission that it won't be making any more R-rated comic book movies, as reported at the website IESB, was hardly the world's biggest surprise. While Watchmen should have got through the $US100m barrier at the US box office by the time this piece goes live, and while it's bringing in a tidy sum overseas, there's a convincing argument that had it been toned down for a PG-13 rating, its take would have been higher, in spite of it inevitably being very much to the detriment of the film (and that's an understatement and a half).

The problem is that Warner Bros needed it to make a lot more money than that. Right now, Watchmen is going to struggle to overtake Paul Blart: Mall Cop at the 2009 box office, and may have a job on its hands to catch the Liam Neeson thriller Taken. It's a good $US30m behind the latter, and even with a harder cut re-release on the big screen, it's simply going to struggle to get there.

The film cost around $150m to produce, and thus the theory is that with its current worldwide take of $US160m, it's in profit. Only the reality is that it's still a long, long way away. Take out the cinema chains' cut, the marketing costs, the distribution expenses and such like, and Watchmen's balance sheet is going to need the DVD release to turn green.

That, however, was likely to have been part of the plan from the start. Home DVD and Blu-ray sales still make up far more revenue than a cinematic release (not for nothing is the theatrical release often referred to as a trailer for the DVD), and Watchmen will live on for many years bringing cash into the Warner Bros vault. But its box office numbers have still scared studios away from the R rated comic book superhero movie.

Marvel
Marvel Studios had already beaten Warner Bros to the punch on this one. It has already said, no doubt while it was rolling in the cash brought in by Iron Man, that it wasn't looking for R-rated comic book movies. And when you look at the numbers, you can understand why. The Dark Knight brought in a million over $US1bn globally. Spider-man 3 made $USUS890m. Iron Man a cool $US582m.

To be fair to Warner Bros and Marvel here, the track record of the genre isn't great in the R-rated department either. Blade II's $US155m worldwide take - $US82m of which was in the US - is one of the few commercial bright spots, whereas last year's Punisher: War Zone drove another nail into the coffin, managing a worldwide take of just over $US10m (leaving The Punisher franchise once again dormant. They'll get Zac Efron in for the next reboot at this rate).

Non-superhero-specific comic book adaptations are still going to be fair game. The $US450m worldwide take of 300 will see to that, and the upcoming Jonah Hex - based on the DC comic - is likely to earn an R rating, too. But these are surely the exceptions.