If you had asked anyone a month ago if Suicide Squad would bring DC Comics and Warner Bros as many, if not more, headaches than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, you'd have probably been laughed at. But now, with the big picture in view, and a disastrous showing with critics, the David Ayer film that was promised to be the second coming may now be known as "Strike 2" for the folks trying to create the DC Cinematic Universe. The most telling sign may be in the film's daily grosses over the weekend, which saw an extremely sharp drop between Friday and Saturday's grosses at the box office.
As early as last night, one of the editors of Box Office Guru had indicated that Suicide Squad would suffer as high as a 40% drop between Thursday and Friday's combined grosses and Saturday's single day grosses. They also estimated that Sunday's grosses would drop below $40 million, after bringing in around $65 million in combined grosses at the end of Friday. Sure enough, the film dropped 40.6% between Friday and Saturday, with Sunday's total haul bringing in around $31 million to close out the historic, but not personal best opening for the DC Cinematic Universe.
Suicide Squad's opening weekend has some stiff competition when compared to both sides of the DC / Marvel divide. Earlier this year, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice suffered a 37.9% drop between Friday and Saturday grosses, which saw that film's Friday haul of $81.5 million drop to a Saturday result of $50.6 million. However, this drop is blown out of the water when you consider that Captain America: Civil War only suffered an 18.8% drop from its combined Friday grosses of $75.5 million to its first Saturday benchmark of $61.2 million.
Going back to Suicide Squad, that film saw $65.3 million walk in the door with Friday's numbers, and saw $38.8 million come in on Saturday. Not only did Marvel Studio's latest film start at a higher diving point, it still managed to come in at a higher mark than DC did on its second day. Still, at least DC Comics has a nifty publicity piece in their music video for "Purple Lamborghini," which might help boost the Suicide Squad soundtrack to heights that may help offset the film's expenses even more.
So with all of the numbers laid out, and Suicide Squad taking a total victory for the weekend, but ultimately looking in bad shape for the long term, are DC Comics and Warner Bros right to fret for the film's overall prospects? In our opinion, we'd have to say yes, especially if David Ayer's slightly subversive comic romp holds to Batman v Superman's box office trajectory. While most films enjoy a second weekend drop that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 50%, DC's superhero battle royale fell around 69% between weekends.
Using those two figures as a range, and not even taking into account the fact that Sausage Party will probably syphon off Suicide Squad's target demo in droves, we're predicting that the second weekend looks like a $41.9 - $67.5 million earning. With a window that wide, and such a potential low point for the second week's numbers, it looks like Sausage Party might find itself top dog at the box office this up coming weekend. Anything can happen in the next week, so we'll update you as soon as we have any new information.
In the meantime, Suicide Squad is in theaters now, awaiting your initial / return patronage with open arms.
