Read the text in the parenthesis in my post. I never said that the film failed, but it made far less money than it should have.
How much was it supposed to make? $668 million is a lot of money. Could it have done more? Sure.
Middling is another word for average or moderate. Not terrible. Would you agree with moderate box office returns? Because that's what exactly I said.
Here's
BoxOfficeMojo's take on the film's numbers.
Box Office Mojo said:
Man of Steel: Zack Snyder-directed Superman reboot Man of Steel set a June opening weekend record with an incredible $116.6 million ($128.7 million including Thursday night grosses). Unfortunately, lukewarm word-of-mouth caused the movie to collapse after opening weekend, and it will wind up earning less than $300 million at the domestic box office. Add in good overseas figures ($360 million and counting) and Man of Steel is absolutely going to turn a profit. Still, the much-publicized decision to add Batman to the Man of Steel sequel suggests that this wasn't the kind of runaway success that Warner Bros. was hoping for.
Here's an analysis from
Forbes.
Forbes said:
That’s no small potatoes (it’s the third-biggest non-sequel superhero comic book film), and much of its $225m budget was paid for via product placements anyway (IHOP: Come for the pancakes, stay because Zod blew you up while you were eating your pancakes). But as I’ve discussed elsewhere, the insertion of Ben Affleck as Batman into the next film shows that Warner is concerned about the ability of a second film to pop accordingly.
The above quotes are subjective to the respective author's expectations of how much a Superman movie should make and how it should be received. Captain America TWS didn't break $300 million domestically and that film had Capt America TFA, Avengers and Agents of Shield to add wind to it's sails. When you say middling BO returns I point to Superman Returns. That film had a budget of $260 million and only did $391 million worldwide. That is a moderate success and that's me being generous with the term success.
Adding Ben Affleck to the cast isn't a sign that TPTB were worried about the sequel. A Batman/Superman has been in the works since Batman Begins and Superman Returns back in 05/06. Only one of the aforementioned films was greenlit for sequels while the other (Returns) was not. Returns' failure caused WB to reboot the franchise. Batman v Superman was announced at San Diego Comic Con 4 weeks after MOS debutted in theaters. TPTB were obviously satisfied with the results.
This is what the President of WB's Production said back in 2008 regarding Superman Returns.
"Superman Returns didn't quite work as a film in the way that we wanted it to. It didn't position the character the way he needed to be positioned. Had Superman worked in 2006, we would have had a movie for Christmas of this year or 2009. Now the plan is just to reintroduce Superman without regard to a Batman and Superman movie at all".
So we have Returns which didn't get a sequel because it didn't position the character the way WB wanted and you have MOS which apparently satisfied WB to want to see more of Snyder's direction for the character.
If you look at the BO grosses of other blockbusters, E.g Transformers, The Marvel Phase 2 movies (IM3, TWS, TDW), Avengers, Frozen etc. The international market is what pushed those films over the top in terms of financial success. Remember we are comparing MOS, the first movie in a new franchise. Against films that have been around for years and have established foundations that audiences are familiar with. Batman v Superman will probably break a $800 million to a billion now that audiences have been reintroduced to the character and his franchise.
