Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For got off to a very slow start on Thursday, bringing in just $475,000 from showings that began at 9pm on Thursday.  The maudlin teen sudser If I Stay, which started its Thursday showings at 7pm, earned a more respectable $1.1 million and is expected to win the weekend and finish well ahead of the Sin City sequel.
 
Citing the nine-year gap between the first Sin City film and A Dame to Kill For, many analysts are predicting that the Sin City sequel is in danger of finishing behind the live-action TMNT film, now in its third weekend, Guardians of the Galaxy, which is in its fourth, and even the quasi-religious football epic, When the Game Stands Tall.
 
In August of 2005 the first Sin City film roared to a surprising $29.8 million.  Given ticket price inflation, and the fact that the sequel is in 3-D, which commands higher ticket prices, a similar performance by the sequel would mean an opening of $40 million, something that no one is expecting.  The first film had the advantage that its "graphic novel" green screen "look" was still very fresh in 2005.  Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300 had a similar graphic look in 2007, but that film’s sequel 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) opened 36% lower.  Applying that percentage to A Dame to Kill For would yield a $19 million weekend, which, at this point, would have to seem like something of a victory for a film that is reaching theaters about five years past its expiration date.