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While Suicide Squad may have defied the critics last week to earn a record-breaking opening weekend with $135M, it would seem the bad press and weak critical reaction took its toll. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Suicide Squad is projected to earn “nearly $43M” this weekend which would mean the film would suffer a 68% drop.
If this all sounds familiar Warner Bros’. and DC‘s previous film, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, broke records in March with a $166M opening, but had a historically large 69% drop in its second weekend. Warner Bros. has a great track record of marketing their DCEU movies to get hype-driven openings, but they also have a track record of losing box-office traction due to poor word of mouth for general movie-goers.
It also doesn’t help that Suicide Squad had a large amount of its audience snatched away by Sausage Party, which opened this weekend and won the Friday box-office earning $13.50M against Suicide Squad‘s $13.35M. It’s expected to earn $30-33M this weekend in total against a $19M budget. Also opening this week is Disney’s critically acclaimed remake of Pete’s Dragon, which is set to under-perform with a $21-22M opening. Florence Foster Jenkins is offering counter-programming with the Meryl Streep-led biopic set to open to a quiet $6-7M.
“It feels good to be bad…Assemble a team of the world’s most dangerous, incarcerated Super Villains, provide them with the most powerful arsenal at the government’s disposal, and send them off on a mission to defeat an enigmatic, insuperable entity. U.S. intelligence officer Amanda Waller has determined only a secretly convened group of disparate, despicable individuals with next to nothing to lose will do. However, once they realize they weren’t picked to succeed but chosen for their patent culpability when they inevitably fail, will the Suicide Squad resolve to die trying, or decide it’s every man for himself?”
IMAGES: Warner Bros. & Columbia Pictures
