The numbers are in for the weekend box office and, as if it wasn't clear yesterday, Suicide Squad has destroyed all comers with a $135 million take. Along with that impressive monetary take, Suicide Squad has unseated Guardians of the Galaxy as the most lucrative August opening weekend of all time. It's also the best opening weekend take for any movie that Will Smith, who stars as the talented assassin known as Deadshot, has ever had, including the Men in Black movies.
Considering its beloved source material and the fact that its only competition was Nine Lives, which features Kevin Spacey turning into a talking cat, this isn't exactly surprising. Nine Lives came in with $6.5 million total, which is roughly 22% of what Suicide Squad grossed over the weekend, and didn't even crack the top five films at the box office. Still, the big story here is Suicide Squad somewhat redeeming the box-office fiasco that was Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, despite getting a number of extremely negative notices (including one 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 time a movement begins to try to take down a review aggregator because 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 behind Suicide Squad at the box office got much better reviews but have also already had their own boffo opening weekends. Jason Bourne dropped some 60% in its second frame to grab $22 million and land in second place, while Bad Moms nabbed 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 of Star Trek Beyond in 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.
