I'm glad to hear the movie has made at least one top ten best list. But try telling some of the people on a Dark Shadows Group on Facebook that the movie wasn't a bomb....they still maintain it was a 'failure' at the Box Office because it didn't top or make enough money anywhere near The Avengers.
Though as we've said here numerous times, anyone who expected DS to make anywhere near as much as
The Avengers made had completely unrealistic expectations. I mean, not even the prognosticators that said DS would make more money domestically than it actually did ever expected its box office take to be on a par with
The Avengers. In fact, most predictions were that DS would open in the shadow (no pun intended) of
The Avengers and remain in that shadow for the simple fact that DS would not and did not have the same mass box office appeal as
The Avengers.
And another thing that we've often stressed numerous times is that it's an absolute rule of fact that when it comes to the vast majority of supernatural films over the past 30+ years, they do not even come close to grossing $100 million, much less anything like the $600 million
The Avengers has grossed domestically! Apart from DS, two of the most successful supernatural films in 2012 were
Underworld Awakening and
The Woman in Black - and they grossed $62,321,039 and $54,333,290, respectively - considerably less than DS. The huge exception to that rule is anything
Twilight-related - but as we're well aware, once it became obvious how huge the
Twilight franchise was, the thinking on Burton & Company's part was to make DS as far removed from that franchise as possible. Though even if they hadn't decided to go in that direction, that track record of the vast majority of supernatural films in and of itself tells us that without a built-in fan base anywhere near on a par with
Twilight, DS was more than likely never going to approach anything like
Twilight box office numbers.
Though actually, I suppose that if
The Avengers is the box office benchmark to judge by, then despite the fact that
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 has already become the 3rd most successful
Twilight film and it has grossed over $280 million domestically, even it must be considered a bomb. And I ask you, how unrealistic is THAT?!
The Depp/Burton Dark Shadows played in US theaters for at least 161 days/23 weeks!!
The Depp/Burton Dark Shadows is now out on DVD/Blu-ray!!