Suicide Squad drop off

Suicide Squad shattered records, opening to a $135 million domestic box office take. The highest opening August weekend since Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014. Unfortunately, Warner Brothers and DC finds itself in a situation similar to Batman v Super Dawn of Justice. Ticket sales for Suicide Squad have dropped dramatically. It is normal for most movies, even summer blockbusters, to drop between 50% to 65%, so it is fair for me to say the drop was "dramatic" since Suicide Squad's first Friday to second Friday business plummeted 79.4%.


Warner Brothers and DC have been proven successful at generating hype and social media buzz for their films. Remember the insane amount of promotion and how Batman v Super was on every nerd's list as one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year. Which it obviously was, Batman v Super raked in a huge $166 Million dollar domestic box office. Then the bad reviews and the poor word of mouth caused ticket sales to fall a record 81.6%. DC can clearly pack a crowd into a theater on opening weekend, and as with any comic book film, the opening weekend is a rush of comic book nerds who are passionate about the characters and excited to see them on the screen. However, DC apparently can't bring the nerds back for repeat viewings or get a mainstream audience to watch their movies at all. Suicide Squad had no direct competition from a similar film, Marvel or otherwise, but was still bested after one week by the R-Rated animated comedy, Sausage Party. Last post I suggested Pete's Dragon would win the weekend based on the performance of The Jungle Book, but Pete's Dragon flopped.

Seriously. This guys superpower is ropes.

Reports almost identical to 2015's Fantastic Four have circulated that state Suicide Squad was burdened by studio interference. Warner Brothers even edited two versions of the film to screen for test audiences. A lighter and more fun Marvel-style version and the dark and morose version from director David Ayer, which itself was heavily influenced by Zack Snyder. Test audiences favored the lighter version and this caused Warner Brothers to panic, resulting in the extensive re-shoots all the nerd websites were talking about a few months ago. The jazzed-up, fun footage from the re-shoots was cobbled together with Ayer's grim original version, creating a jumbled mess of a film with a horrible flow, inconsistent character choices and gaping plot holes. This is why critics panned the film, not because of some Disney/ Marvel conspiracy or because rottentomatoes.com hates DC. Combine the studio interference with the fact that Suicide Squad is essentially a run of the mill Will Smith action movie, the source material was often ignored and the trailers were incredibly misleading and you shouldn't need to ask why the critics were so harsh. Despite the heavy focus on Jared Leto's Joker in trailers and promotional materials, the clown prince of crime is barely in the movie for more than a glorified cameo, and several scenes shown in the previews aren't even in the final cut. This is why some critics say the trailers sold a movie that doesn't exist, not because they are being unfair.

After the poor reception of Batman v Superman, Warner Brothers shuffled things around. They placed comic book writer and Chief Creative Officer of DC Entertainment Geoff Johns in a position to oversee the entirety of the DC Extended Universe, similar to Kevin Feige at Marvel. A promising move that could steer the franchise in the right direction. Unfortunately, Suicide Squad was well into post-production for Johns' promotion to have any affect. Justice League and Wonder Woman are in production now but with so many decisions already made Johns may or may not be able to guide the films to good reviews or a successful second weekend. Reports are already coming in that say Wonder Woman is a mess. Sadly the next two films on the DCEU slate that could be under the complete control of Johns are The Flash and Aquaman and I don't see either of those being a massive box office success or even that important to the rest of the film slate. This is the third movie in the DCEU and after each of the three, the nerd websites and entertainment analysts warn that DC needs to change course if they want to compete with Marvel, but how many chances are they going to get before it hurts their nerd heavy opening weekends.

Update. Suicide Squad did loose to Sausage Party on Friday but rebounded to win the weekend. Weekend to weekend business for the DC film dropped 67%. This is slightly less than Batman v Superman's 69% second weekend drop but worse than Deadpool's 58% or Captain America Civil War's 60% second weekend drop off. It remains true that as time passes, hype calms, and the bad reviews and poor word of mouth spreads, DC films can't avoid a steep decline during the second weekend. Of course, with the huge opening weekends their films remain profitable and the DC Extended Universe slate of films will carry on. However, as I stated above, how many more chances does DC have before the lucrative opening weekend numbers begin to fall.