Many Watch the Watchmen at Midnight

is reporting that the Watchmen movie earned an estimated $4.55 million during midnight showings of the film earlier today. Almost 1600 theatres showed the long awaited film based on the Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons miniseries, including over 100 special screenings in IMAX. Every late night IMAX showing is said to have sold out, prompting several IMAX theatres to schedule an additional showing at 3:00 am in order to meet the demand.

Most box office forecasters are predicting that Watchmen will be the number one movie when the weekend is over. Entertainment Weekly is predicting that the film will earn over $75 million dollars. The Watchmen movie has already broken Zack Snyder's late night screening ticket sales record of his last comic book movie, 300. When 300 premiered in 2007, it earned a gross of $2.5 million in midnight showing ticket sales. The movie went on to earn $70.9 million during its opening weekend.

Though Watchmen has already earned almost double of the midnight gross of Snyder's previous film, experts believe that Watchmen's run time of almost 3 hours will dissuade viewers unfamiliar with the comic and hamper ticket sales. However, Comicbook.com predicted earlier this week that the long running time and some early negative reviews won't stop the Watchmen movie from raking in huge numbers at the box office. Comicbook.com's prediction runs higher than most published forecasts and places the Watchmen movie opening weekend at between $85 and $95 million.