GREEN LANTERN 2 may be on the way, despite box office numbers

GREEN LANTERN 2 may be on the way, despite box office numbers

Warner Brothers has big shoes to fill, or rather, big wands to replace.  With the finale of the worldwide success of their Harry Potter franchise, which has seen over $6.3 Billion dollars in box office gross thus far, coming to an end next month on July 15 with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, Warner Brothers is desperate to fill the void with a new franchise.  One of those in mind for them was the Martin Campbell directed Green Lantern.

Opening last weekend to a rather low $70,961,000 worldwide gross with $53,174,303 of that coming from the US, expectations were not met.  In its second week of showing, the DC Comics superhero’s first live-action outing dropped a disappointing, but rather predictable, 65.5% to number 3, seeing it’s worldwide take move to only $118,711,000, according to Box Office Mojo.

While DC is definitely disappointed with box-office response, they are not yet ready to give up on their emerald space cop.  According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Brothers is in fact moving forward with a sequel to Green Lantern:

Warner Bros. is already planning a sequel to Ryan Reynolds’ superhero pic Green Lantern, despite the film’s soft performance at the box office.

Sources say Warners still believes in the franchise, even if the studio is “somewhat disappointed” with Green Lantern’s result.

Over the weekend, Green Lantern fell a steep 66% at the domestic box office, grossing $18.4 million for a cume of $89.3 million. That’s a big decline.

Warner Bros. president of domestic distribution Dan Fellman said the movie is settling in, pointing out that fanboy pics often see a significant drop-off in their second weekends.

With over 20 markets still left for the movie to open, and merchandising at full steam, it appears that Warner Brothers is hoping to make up more of the reported $200 million dollar budget ($300 million with marketing and advertising).

Green Lantern was said to be a testing ground for Warner Brothers to test out the marketability of their other superhero properties (Read:  Not Superman or Batman) like Wonder Woman, Flash and even Hawkman.  It’s good to see that this has not soured the studio in pursuing more of their properties including the option for a second chance for Hal and his intergalactic buddies.

What do you think of this news?  Should Green Lantern be given a second chance to fix the mistakes made by the first movie?  What did you think of the first movie?  To read what our head honcho thought, read Mr. Walters’ review of Green Lantern here.

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About the Author

Jim is an avid movie enthusiast, representing the general movie going audience, looking at movies for their entertainment value as opposed to their critical weight. He enjoys the escapism that movies provide. He is a fan of all genre's of movies, but gravitates toward comic-based movies, summer "popcorn" flicks and over-the-top comedies as his preference.