Suicide Squad Slays Newcomers At Box Office

As summer winds down, the August box office has been predominantly dominated by one film: Suicide Squad. For the third week in a row, the DC Comics film topped the box office, easily overcoming all three of the new wide releases. Dropping only 52.1% – it fell 67.4% the week before – it came away with $20.9 million, and now has a domestic total of over $260 million. Internationally, it’s done even better, taking in a foreign gross of $313 million – which makes its worldwide cume just over $575 million. It’ll look to finish somewhere close to $650 million, and that’s without opening in China – the second biggest market. In more disappointing box office-related news, none of the three new movies opened anywhere close to what one could declare as “strong.” The best was a $14.7 million opening for War Dogs. At a $40 million budget, it might come the closest to making a profit – but it still seems unlikely. The $60 million-budgeted Kubo and the Two Strings made just $12.6 million, the lowest opening for stop-motion studio Laika. All three of the studio’s previous movies made it to the $100 million worldwide total, but Kubo is going to struggle to get there. The new remake of Ben-Hur might wind up being the biggest bomb of the summer, taking in only $11.2 million in its opening weekend. With a $100 million budget – before marketing – it’s going to lose a lot of money for Paramount, which has had a series of disappointments in 2016. Nobody asked for another Ben-Hur, and it turns out that very few people went to see it. (I didn’t review it, but I did see it. It’s very, very bland, and not worth the time.) Here is the top ten for the weekend:

  1. Suicide Squad ($20.9 million, week 3) 2. Sausage Party ($15.5 million, week 2) 3. War Dogs ($14.7 million, week 1) 4. Kubo and the Two Strings ($12.6 million, week 1) 5. Pete’s Dragon ($11.4 million, week 2) 6. Ben-Hur ($11.2 million, week 1) 7. Jason Bourne ($8 million, week 4) 8. Bad Moms ($7.9 million, week 4) 9. The Secret Life of Pets ($5.9 million, week 7) 10. Florence Foster Jenkins ($4.4 million, week 2) Source: BoxOfficeMojo.