The Suicide Squad may be on a mission that's going to get them all killed, but it looks like at least they're going to be well paid. The estimates for the film's opening weekend just keep going up. Estimates a couple of weeks ago had put the film at a perfectly acceptable $100 million. However, just a couple of days before preview audiences get their first look, the estimates have shifted up to possibly as much as $140 million, which would put it in the top three openings for the year.
The biggest August opening is 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy, which brought in a very nice $94 million. This means that even at the low estimates, Suicide Squad was likely to have the biggest August opening ever. Now, according to The Wrap, it's probably going to blow that number completely out of the water. Box office estimates have been slowly increasing over the last couple of weeks from $115 million to $125 million, and currently estimates sit somewhere between $130 and $140 million.
If Suicide Squad opens at the low end of that range it will have the fifth best opening of the year, but if it opens near the top it could do as well as third, beating out both Deadpool and Finding Dory. Warner Bros. is predicting an opening around $125 million, although studios are always more conservative with their numbers. It allows them to hedge their bets and do "better than expected" if the movie actually does as analysts predict.
The opening weekend is certainly important for Warner Bros., but there's a lot more riding on Suicide Squad than simply the box office numbers. One of the movies that Suicide Squad has little chance of overcoming at the box office this weekend is the previous DC film, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Yet, while that movie had a tremendous box office overall, it was not well received by many fans or critics. In response, a number of behind the scenes changes were made to how Warner Bros. handles their DC movies. A similar critical response for Suicide Squad could have additional repercussions for the DCEU in front of the camera as well. One rumor claims that the public response to the film, and to Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn specifically, may go a long way to deciding whether or not a Harley Quinn spinoff film happens.
Will you be checking out Suicide Squad this weekend? Let us know how excited you are in the comments.
Suicide Squad will make its way to theaters on August 5th.
