Despite generally positive reviews from critics and audiences, grosses for last weekend’s opening of Warner Bros.’ THE SUICIDE SQUAD underperformed expectations, coming in at $27.6M for its opening three days. Going into the weekend, the industry consensus was that the opening of the James Gunn-directed DC superhero film would generate $30M – $35M. Given that Warner Bros. invested $185M to produce the film and $100M more to promote it, the studio is understandably concerned about these results.
Comscore’s Senior Media Analyst Paul Dergarabedian highlights three factors that conspired to limit SUICIDE’S box office performance: “the pandemic, a day-and-date release strategy, consumer preferences — or a combination of all three.” The film’s R-rating may also have limited its audience compared with the David Ayer-directed 2016 original SUICIDE SQUAD which had a PG-13 rating and did $746M worldwide despite receiving terrible reviews.