Weekend Estimates: Suicide Squad Crashes into August Record Books

August 7, 2016

Suicide Squad

One of the most talked-about debuts of the year is shaping up to be one of the better ones. Suicide Squad will open with about $135 million, according to Warner Bros., easily the biggest weekend in August, beating Guardians of the Galaxy’s $94.3 million in 2014. It’s also the 3rd-best weekend in 2016, and should earn a little more than Deadpool’s $132 million debut. In spite of these awesome stats, there’s about as much negative press for the film as positive, and some of it not entirely fair.

Obviously the film isn’t getting the kind of reviews people were hoping for, and a score of 26% positive at Rotten Tomatoes bodes ill for its long-term prospects. Its audience score of 73% is reasonable though. Jason Bourne is currently scoring 64% on that metric and Star Trek Beyond 84%, so Suicide Squad’s performance can best be described as middling.

There’s also been much talk of the film’s decline from Friday to Saturday. We ran the numbers on that. Here are the top 100 all-time declines from Friday to Saturday at the box office:

Suicide Squad is in fifth place in this chart with a decline estimated at around 41% (we’ll have a more precise number when final numbers are reported on Monday). The films around it on the list were all hugely hyped sequels from the Harry Potter, Twilight and Star Wars franchises. Also high on the list are Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Man of Steel and The Dark Knight Rises, the latter of which suffered from the shooting tragedy on its opening night.

The bottom line seems to be that Suicide Squad is doing very well among its core audience, and its opening weekend performance is testament to Warner Bros.’ marketing efforts. For the second time this year the studio has delivered a huge opening weekend for the DC Extended Universe. But the challenge of extending the franchise beyond its core fans remains. Financially, this doesn’t look like the Marvel or Star Wars franchises yet.

Back on this weekend’s chart, the less said about Nine Lives the better, frankly. The family film will earn about $6.5 million from 2,264 theaters.

In limited release, Equity is continuing to perform well for Sony Classics, with about $60,000 projected from four locations in its second weekend. The best theater average for the weekend, however, will go to Operation Chromite. We haven’t seen an official estimate for the film, but it looks as though it will earn close to $30,000 from a single venue.

- Weekend estimates

- Suicide Squad comparison chart
- DC Extended Universe at the box office
- Biggest August weekends
- Nine Lives comparison chart
- Jason Bourne comparison chart
- Bourne franchise history
- Bad Moms comparison chart
- Star Trek Beyond comparison chart
- Star Trek franchise history
- Ghostbusters comparison chart
- The Secret Life of Pets comparison chart
- Finding Dory comparison chart
- Highest-grossing animated movies
- Top 2016 movies at the global box office

Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Jason Bourne, Suicide Squad, Star Trek Beyond, Nine Lives, Operation Chromite, Equity, Star Wars, Star Trek, Bourne, Marvel Cinematic Universe, DC Extended Universe