8 Times Audiences Were Blamed For Movies That Failed
6. Bryan Singer Thinks Superman Returns Underperformed Because Women Didn't Go And See It
While 2006's Superman Returns wasn't a full-blown disaster by any means, it was still a financial disappointment for Warner Bros and failed to click with fans and critics in the same way Batman Begins did, which released the year prior.
The quality of the film is up for debate, of course, but in the years since it came out, director Bryan Singer has talked about its box-office performance specifically, sharing his odd opinion on why he thinks it didn't do better.
Singer aimed to make Superman Returns a nostalgia-driven film, harkening back to the older Christopher Reeve movies and aiming for a similar tone. The director has also called it a romantic movie, which was an intentional move on his part in order to try and attract a larger female audience. Unfortunately, he has previously admitted that they just didn't show up to see it:
"What I had noticed is that there weren’t a lot of women lining up to see a comic book movie, but they were going to line up to see The Devil Wears Prada, which may have been something I wanted to address."
The Devil Wears Prada opened around the same time, and in terms of return on investment, it was a far bigger success than its blockbuster rival.
On a separate occasion, Singer acknowledged that his movie also didn't do enough to attract said female audience in the first place:
"It was a movie made for a certain kind of audience. Perhaps more of a female audience. It wasn't what it needed to be, I guess."
Superman Returns is hardly a Fast and Furious-style macho-fest, but it isn't a soppy romantic drama, either. The movie just didn't jive with mass audiences, and pinning its financial shortcomings on one demographic is just weird.