Deadline reports that The Suicide Squad debuted at the North American box office on Friday with $12.1 million (including $4.1 million from Thursday previews). As a result, Task Force X's return to the big screen looks set to earn an estimated $25.7 million during its opening weekend which is short of the $30 million Warner Bros. and many analysts expected.
This debut is lower than Birds of Prey's $33 million opening weekend, though we're not sure that's a fair comparison when The Suicide Squad is available on HBO Max right now for free!
The trade takes a deep dive into what happened and whether the Delta variant of COVID-19 is a factor. There are no lockdowns, so whether people are making a conscious decision to not go to places like movie theaters is hard to say, but it appears there were other, more pressing factors at play.
Apparently, "many read the tea leaves and saw that The Suicide Squad was destined to have a bad time at the B.O.; that the movie had bigger inherent problems: It’s hard to rebound a franchise, even with an installment that has excellent reviews and a great director, after the first 2016 film wasn’t received well by fans, and the follow-up Birds of Prey even significantly less-so."
"Also, many will argue that marketing dropped the ball here in not distinguishing the pic’s title: is it a sequel? It is a reboot? What message are we trying to transmit to the consumer?" they explain. "Even if the number ‘2’ wasn’t in the title, add some more words in the title to indicate a purely different film in the series, i.e. ‘The Suicide Squad Goes To The Jungle’. Anything."
Free Guy and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will be the big test in terms of whether COVID-19 is an issue for movies playing in theaters right now, but James Gunn can't be happy with this news (it was reported that he was among the filmmakers who didn't want their movies to go day-and-date with HBO Max).
While it had the advantage of being released in early July - and was available on Disney+ for $29.99 rather than for free - Black Widow's opening day, in comparison, was just shy of $40 million. The Suicide Squad does boast an R-Rating, though movies like Deadpool and Joker have proved that isn't always a detriment to box office success.
Needless to say, this movie had a lot stacked against it, so we'll keep you updated with its performance.