No, it's really not a contest of Marvel vs. DC but Warner Bros' Suicide Squad did beat Marvel Entertainment's Guardians of the Galaxy's and Fox's Deadpool records with stellar box office returns this weekend. And women were a big part of its success.
Earlier reports said the villanous crew might take in $145M-$150 million dollars but The Hollywood Reporter says it's more like $135.1. And yes, that number puts it officially ahead of 2014's Guardians which took in $94.3. It also just narrowly edged out the R-rated Deadpool which earlier this year had a three-day debut of $134.2 million. THR reports:
After pulling in an impressive $65.1 million on Friday, it looked like the Warner Bros.' tentpole, playing in 4,255 theaters, would debut to $145 million-$150 million. But traffic slowed dramatically throughout Saturday, or 41 percent day-over-day, a far steeper drop than other successful superhero movies (The Dark Knight also dropped 41 percent, but the movie was impacted by the Aurora shooting.)
Overseas, Suicide Squad amassed $132 million in its debut in 57 markets, the second-best showing for a DC superhero title after Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice ($256.5 million) and the biggest August launch of any film. That puts Suicide Squad's global bow at $267.1 million. (Dawn of Justice had the advantage of opening day-and-date in China, where Suicide Squad won't get a berth).
Suicide Squad's global numbers also beat Deadpool's which were $264.7 million. Jason Bourne dropped 61.6% this weekend but still took second place with an additional $22.7 million added to its take and Star Trek Beyond dropped 58.8%. The only other new film this weekend, Kevin Spacey's Nine Lives, landed at number six with just $6.5 million.
While the story around this film started falling into Batman v Superman v Critics v Fans again thanks to a lot of negative reviews and ridiculous petitions to fight those reviews, we'll have to wait and see if it actually did please the masses or if it will see a 69.1% drop like Batman v Superman did in its second week. One thing's for sure, Suicide Squad had great marketing but from what I've heard, the tone doesn't quite match. Next weekend sees the release of Disney's family friendly Pete's Dragon and Sony's R-rated animated film Sausage Party.
The film had a large cast of mostly unknown characters (to the general public at least) but it did have Harley Quinn, Katana, Enchantress, and Amanda Waller which is more prominent women than any other superhero film has seen and could be the main reason women going to see the film were almost equal to men.
BoxOfficeMojo.com writes, “From an audience perspective, the audience was 54% male vs. 46% female with women rating the film an “A-” on the CinemaScore scale versus a “B+” from the men. Interestingly enough, IMDb's user voting currently shows a similar trend with females scoring the film 7.3 vs. males scoring it with a 6.9. Additionally, 54% of the audience was under the age of 25 and 76% of the audience was under the age of 35.”
In comparison, Batman v Superman was 38% women, 38% for Deadpool, and 34% for Captain America: Civil War. It should be a sign to Warner Bros. they were on the right track setting Margot Robbie up for a Harley Quinn film featuring other women from DC Comics. I'll be interested to see if the breakdown tips the other way when Wonder Woman is released.