Well, Suicide Squad ended up following the typical pattern for anticipated DC movies that are reviled by critics, open huge and then fall off a cliff in the second week. Squad fell about 67%, a very steep drop to come in with $43 million, not great at all, but its total is $222 million so far and over $300 million globally, so even though the consensus is that these movies suck, they still make enough money to justify continuing production. The question is how long can this sustain itself without improving the quality of the films? Hopefully audiences will wise to this eventually, but with real excitement already for next year's Wonder Woman, it probably won't be anytime soon.
As for the new releases, the Seth Rogen produced Sausage Party, the raunchy R-rated animated film for adults, kinda gave Suicide Squad a run for its money, coming in way above expectations with $33 million for the weekend. The movie got pretty good reviews as well, but just a "B" Cinemascope (I wonder if naive parents wound up taking their kids to this thing, only to come out of it horrified). That may mean that the legs on this comedy won't hold up well, but then again, there's not a lot of competition for the rest of the summer either. A movie actually intended for the family audience, the remake of Pete's Dragon, came in with a soft $21 million, but with a budget of only $65 million, there's a chance it will recoup its costs in time, since reviews were very positive for it as well. Jason Bourne and Bad Moms filled out the top five, the latter especially having turned into a great success for STX entertainment, as it's holding onto its female audience extremely well, and with just a $20 million budget, will wind up at or near $100 million domestic.
Top 5:
- Suicide Squad- $43.8 million
- Sausage Party- $33.6 million
- Pete's Dragon- $21.5 million
- Jason Bourne- $13.6 million
- Bad Moms- $11.5 million
In smaller release, the annual late summer Meryl Streep vehicle Florence Foster Jenkins, took its positive reviews to a meager $6 million opening from around 1500 locations, while the superbly reviewed western Hell or High Water, starring Chris Pine, seemingly came out of nowhere to make $18k from 32 theaters- people are going to have to seek that one out, as it's now the best reviewed movie of the year, despite little attention paid to it when it showed outside of competition at the Cannes film festival. Next week it's Laika Studios' stop-motion animated release Kubo and the Two Strings, against the Ben-Hur remake and Jonah HIll's black comedy War Dogs. See you all then!
