Weekend Box Office: Suicide Squad Takes August Record, But Not The Best DC Opening This Year

3 years ago

Suicide Squad's August release might have been strategic, given that August was the only summer month left without a $100+ million opening. The DC flick's competition for August's biggest opening was Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy with its $94 million start two summers ago, giving Suicide Squad a good chance to make a little bit of record-breaking news.

With $135 million, Suicide Squad made a strong debut, but the opening still came in well behind this year's Captain America: Civil War ($179 million, May) and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice ($166 million, March) and is only ahead of Finding Dory's debut by less than $100,000. The question now is how well Suicide Squad can hold on going in to its second and third weekends, to perhaps end up above $300 million in domestic sales.

At some point Barry Sonnenfeld and Kevin Spacey must have made a bet wherein Spacey lost and was forced to star in any movie Sonnenfeld demanded. There's no other immediate logical explanation for how Spacey ended up in Nine Lives, a movie so terrible that it was lucky to bank $6 million for a sixth place start. That's the lowest opening for a wide-release Spacey movie since 1997's Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil, and that's only because tickets were less than half today's prices in 1997.

Jason Bourne slipped over 60% going into its second weekend, barely pushing past the $100 million mark. Star Trek Beyond also tumbled hard on its third weekend and now faces the prospect of being the first post-reboot entry to miss the $200 million mark. The Secret Life of Pets pushed past $300 million this last week, and is within $11 million of passingBatman v Superman.

Now in its eighth weekend Finding Dory finally slipped out of the top ten, but is still pulling seven digits, heaping on to its top year-to-date total of $473 million. There's still some potential strong competition from Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story later this year, but both being spin-offs they may not perform to the levels of their base franchises.

For the full weekend top ten, check out the chart below:

1.	Suicide Squad *	$135,105,000	Total: $135,105,000	LW: N THTRS: 4,255
2.	Jason Bourne	$22,710,000	Total: $103,416,020	LW: 1 THTRS: 4,039
3.	Bad Moms	$14,204,000	Total: $51,050,830	LW: 3 THTRS: 3,215
4.	The Secret Life of Pets	$11,560,000	Total: $319,578,780	LW: 4 THTRS: 3,417
5.	Star Trek Beyond	$10,200,000	Total: $127,901,364	LW: 2 THTRS: 3,263
6.	Nine Lives (2016) *	$6,500,000	Total: $6,500,000	LW: N THTRS: 2,264
7.	Lights Out	$6,005,000	Total: $54,714,252	LW: 6 THTRS: 2,581
8.	Nerve	$4,900,000	Total: $26,888,794	LW: 8 THTRS: 2,538
9.	Ghostbusters (2016)	$4,800,000	Total: $116,711,936	LW: 7 THTRS: 2,545
10.	Ice Age: Collision Course	$4,300,000	Total: $53,539,797	LW: 5 THTRS: 2,738