‘Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice’ Just Missed Another Embarrassing Target

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice just missed another embarrassing box office target in its fourth full weekend.

In addition to crashing hard on its Friday take — along with the poorly-reviewed Melissa McCarthy film The Boss, which beat it last week — it appears that the superhero mashup will be unable to overtake a minor Marvel character’s film in U.S. box office.

According to the box office tracking site Box Office Mojo, Batman v Superman has only grossed $304 million domestically as of Friday (April 15).

Furthermore, a look at the dailies reveals that after opening on March 25 to an impressive $81 million that included some early Thursday ticketing, the film crashed to $50 million in Saturday showings and $33 million in Sunday gate, totaling $164 million for its opening weekend.

Now look at weekend No. 2 (April 1-3).

Along with the weekday totals, this placed Batman v Superman at $260.4 million overall.

Since that second weekend, the film has only managed to gross $43.6 million over the course of two Monday through Thursday runs, one full weekend, and a second Friday gross.

Speaking of that Friday (yesterday), it totaled just $2.36 million and placed the Zack Snyder-directed film on pace to finish No. 4 for the weekend behind The Jungle Book, Barbershop: The Next Cut, and The Boss.

Translation: the film is fading quickly. But that isn’t the worst part for the DC Extended Movie Universe that Batman v Superman was supposed to facilitate.

No, that comes with the new realization that Deadpool, an R-rated movie about a minor character from rival comic book studio Marvel, will likely end up winning the U.S. box office race with $359 million (and still counting).

Batman is a character that has already grossed more than $1 billion in standalone movies for DC and Warner under the guidance of director Christopher Nolan.

Superman is easily the most recognizable comic book character of all time and cut his teeth fighting for “truth, justice, and the American way.”

Throw in another hugely popular character — Wonder Woman — not to mention the countless cameos, and you have a superhero team-up event that should have smashed every record imaginable.

Instead, that same movie was unable to overcome a character few general movie audiences had heard of prior to his solo film.

Deadpool was also working from the outset with the traditionally hampering stigma of starring in a rated-R film.

It’s a jarring comparison that seems to vindicate negative critical response, which “awarded” Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice a dismal 28 percent on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

All that said, however, the film is unlikely to lose money.

While the true costs of marketing and production are unknown — some have tallied it at between $400 million and $450 million — the film has grossed $805 million worldwide.

Still, close to $600 million of that came in its opening weekend. The rest has played out over three grueling weekends filled with unkind word-of-mouth.

CinemaScore users rated it equal to the critically maligned Catwoman and The Green Lantern. The RT community has it at just 69 percent.

Industry news sites like Deadline and the Hollywood Reporter have indicated that the surprise reshoots to August’s Suicide Squad were in response to the negative reaction this film received, and there is also word that DC and Warner are rethinking the quantity of films they had initially planned for their DC Extended Movie Universe.

But what do you think, readers?

Does the film deserve the negative reaction that it’s getting, and do you think that Batman v Superman being unable to eclipse Deadpool at the U.S. box office is an embarrassment for DC and Warner?

[Image via Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice screen grab]