- Sucker Punch box office: Zack Snyder extravaganza featuring young women in tights is about to become the director’s latest major money-loser. In the cast: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, and Vanessa Hudgens.
Sucker Punch box office: Zack Snyder’s latest display of cinematic excess fails to lure domestic moviegoers
March 25–27 weekend box office (cont.): Although 20th Century Fox’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules was the no. 1 movie on the North American (U.S. and Canada only) chart, this past weekend’s big box office news was the feeble commercial performance of the no. 2 title, Warner Bros.’ Sucker Punch.
Directed by Zack Snyder and starring Emily Browning as a young mental patient living in a fantasy world where she and her fellow inmates are sex slaves in tights, the critically excoriated Sucker Punch raked in $19.1 million from 3,033 locations according to final studio figures found at boxofficemojo.com.
Whereas in its first three days out Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules managed to surpass its modest production budget, Sucker Punch will find it impossible to match – let alone recover – its reported $82 million price tag (as always, not including marketing and distribution expenses) in the domestic market. International moviegoers are its only hope.
Sucker Punch vs. Watchmen
For comparison’s sake: Distributed domestically by Warner Bros. (Paramount Pictures was a coproducing company), and starring Malin Åkerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, and Carla Gugino, Zack Snyder’s previous live-action film, Watchmen, opened with $55.2 million from 3,611 venues in March 2009.
The actioner ended its run with $107.5 million domestically, in addition to $77.9 million internationally. Worldwide total: $185.4 million – generally speaking a strong figure, but far from enough for Watchmen to recover its $130 million budget. (See further below more information about money-losing/profitable releases.)
Zack Snyder movies’ shaky commercial appeal
Considering that Zack Snyder’s 2010 computer-animated fantasy adventure Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole also turned out to be a commercial dud, Warners must be nervous about the director’ next, the mega-budget Man of Steel, starring British actor Henry Cavill as the latest big-screen incarnation of Superman.
And that would be fully understandable.
Besides Emily Browning as the Walter Mittyesque mental patient – known as “Babydoll” (no connection to Carroll Baker’s 1956 character in the two-word Baby Doll) – Sucker Punch features Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Oscar Isaac, Jon Hamm, Watchmen’s Carla Gugino, and veteran Scott Glenn (Nashville, Apocalypse Now).
Global dud
Update: Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch ultimately collected a measly $36.4 million domestically and an estimated $53.4 million internationally. Worldwide total: $89.8 million – like Watchmen’s global gross, far from enough for the psychological fantasy actioner to recover its costs.
Sucker Punch’s top international markets were France ($5 million), Australia ($4.6 million), Germany ($4.2 million), Russia/CIS ($3.8 million), and the United Kingdom/Ireland ($3.8 million).
“Sucker Punch Box Office: Zack Snyder Appeal Increasingly Shaky” notes
Besides Henry Cavill, Man of Steel also stars three-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams (Junebug, 2005; etc.) as Lois Lane, and another Oscar nominee, Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road, 2008), as General Zod.
Unless otherwise noted, “Sucker Punch Box Office: Zack Snyder Appeal Increasingly Shaky” box office information via Box Office Mojo. Budget info – which should be taken with a grain of salt – via BOM and/or other sources (e.g., the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Screen Daily, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline.com, etc.).
Comments about Sucker Punch and other titles being hits/profitable or flops/money-losers at the box office (see paragraph below) are based on the available data about their production budget, additional marketing and distribution expenses (as a general rule of thumb, around 50 percent of the production cost), and worldwide gross (as a general rule of thumb when it comes to the Hollywood studios, around 50–55 percent of the domestic gross and 40 percent of the international gross go to the distributing/producing companies).
Note: Data regarding rebates, domestic and international sales/pre-sales, and other credits and/or contractual details that help to alleviate/split production costs and apportion revenues are oftentimes unavailable, and that reported international grosses may be incomplete (i.e., not every territory is fully – or even partially – accounted for).
Also: Ancillary revenues (domestic/global television rights, home video sales, streaming, merchandising, etc.) can represent anywhere between 40–70 percent of a movie’s total take. However, these revenues and their apportionment are only infrequently made public.
‘Horribly misconceived’
Regarding Sucker Punch, The Guardian’s Ben Child writes:
“Horribly misconceived, puerile, distasteful and hugely wasteful of the talent involved, Snyder’s latest release is Coyote Ugly for the fanboy brigade – or Girl, Interrupted, had Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie been forced to spend the entire film shooting things while tarted up to the nines in stockings and suspenders. Quite what Snyder was thinking is anyone’s guess, but one can only assume he was given free reign to indulge his cinematic vision following the relative box office successes of 300 and Watchmen (and promptly fluffed his lines).”
In addition, Child wonders: “Can one film ruin a career?”
Ask Michael Cimino, who, a year after winning the Best Director Oscar for The Deer Hunter (1978), became responsible for the flop that did United Artists in: Heaven’s Gate (1980).
Vanessa Hudgens Sucker Punch image: Clay Enos | Warner Bros.
“Sucker Punch Box Office: Shaky Zack Snyder Appeal” last modified in June 2025.