Suicide Squad had an up-and-down opening weekend. After the first wave of reviews -- which weren't overly positive -- the movie started to screen for audience members and fans. And they turned out in droves! Thursday was a huge number, and while business slowed down, the overall total of $135 million was a great first start for the DC blockbuster. What did fans do when they came home from watching Suicide Squad? Well, stats tell us they searched for superhero-related porn.
That's right. Suicide Squad had a tangible effect on the type of porn that was searched on Pornhub, one of the world's top aggregators of adult content. But the effect of David Ayer's new movie opening was minimal. According to statistics released by the company's Insights division, search traffic on Pornhub for Suicide Squad increased by 1,072% following the movie's debut on Friday, August 5. 1,072 percent!! I mean, just look at this graph:
This prompted Pornhub to dig a little deeper into its analytics. Concluding that many of its users seek to inject pop-culture references into their fantasies, the site broke down search results on Superhero Characters and Teams in its database. To no one's surprise, Harley Quinn (portrayed by Margot Robbie in David Ayer's movie) leads all searched superheroes, and it isn't even close:
Magneto is on that list? Freaky.
Some of the data collected by Pornhub is equally obvious. The company reveals that men are 122% more likely to search for super hero parodies, and that patrons in the 18-to-24 age group are 74% more likely to search on said topic versus all other age ranges.
The impact of Suicide Squad's success is long-reaching -- and no, that's not a porn pun -- and we haven't stopped feeling the effects of its aftershock just yet. Numbers like the ones posted by Suicide Squad tend to lead to a sequel. However, this movie (like most of DC's movies) cost a lot to make, and the villain ensemble will have to continue to pack them in globally if it hopes to make a tidy profit for Warner Bros. In the meantime, the studio is moving ahead with sequels like Man of Steel 2, while also developing standalone stories for The Flash and Aquaman. Good thing, according to the above chart, Superman ranks in the Top 5 most-searched superheroes for porn parodies on Pornhub.
Suicide Squad is in theaters as we speak.
