The numbers are in for the weekend box office and, as if it wasn’t clear yesterday,Suicide Squadhas destroyed all comers with a $135 million take. Along with that impressive monetary take,Suicide Squadhas unseatedGuardians of the Galaxyas the most lucrative August opening weekend of all time. It’s also the best opening weekend take for any movie thatWill Smith, who stars as the talented assassin known as Deadshot, has ever had, including theMen in Blackmovies.
Considering its beloved source material and the fact that its only competition wasNine Lives, which featuresKevin Spaceyturning into a talking cat, this isn’t exactly surprising.Nine Livescame in with $6.5 million total, which is roughly 22% of whatSuicide Squadgrossed over the weekend, and didn’t even crack the top five films at the box office. Still, the big story here isSuicide Squadsomewhat redeeming the box-office fiasco that wasBatman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, despite getting a number of extremely negative notices (includingone from our very own Matt Goldberg). This will no doubt reinforce the hard-to-dispute truth that bad reviews have zero bearing on the box-office take, especially when it comes to major blockbusters like this.
Let’s all try to keep this in mind the next timea movement begins to try to take down a review aggregatorbecause the imaginary bad men in Marvel’s pocket made fun of the movie most people haven’t seen. The rest of the movies that followed behindSuicide Squadat the box office got much better reviews but have also already had their own boffo opening weekends.Jason Bournedropped some 60% in its second frame to grab $22 million and land in second place, whileBad Momsnabbed the third spot with $14.2 million.The Secret Life of Pets, which has been one of the summer’s strongest hits, came in fourth with $11.6 million, landing right ahead ofStar Trek Beyondin fifth place with $10.2 million in its third week. Now comes the bigger question: does the movie have legs to score a lucrative second weekend? We shall see.
