‘Suicide Squad’ on Target for $115 Million Debut, Shattering August Box Office Record
Warner Bros.’ supervillain mash-up “Suicide Squad” is poised for a $100 million-plus opening on August 5, according to early tracking figures.
That would make David Ayer‘s DC Comics movie the first August release to top $100 million in its opening weekend and shatter the August record set by Disney-Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” which opened at $94.3 million in 2014.
Some prognosticators set the first weekend of the Warner Bros. film, starring Will Smith, Margot Robbie and Jared Leto, as high as $120 million, with the current estimate averaging approximately $115 million.
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Despite the sterling projections, “Suicide Squad” should still open below Disney-Marvel’s “Captain America: Civil War” — which bowed to nearly $180 million in early May — and also Warner Bros. previous DC Comics movie “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” which opened with $166 million in domestic grosses in March.
The upcoming Warner Bros. antihero supergroup movie is currently tracking to open just shy of Disney-Pixar’s $135-million first weekend for “Finding Dory” and also Fox’s “Deadpool,” which opened to $132.4 million.
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That’s still a huge number, particularly for a new franchise launch, and comes during a summer that’s in desperate need of bigger box office receipts.
With only six weeks to go until the end of the summer season, total domestic grosses are only at $2.6 billion, pacing well behind last summer’s record box office — whose final tally of $4.5 billion seems unlikely to be topped.
Another indicator of “Suicide Squad”‘s impending success: The title has inspired a total of more than 1.6 million conversations on social media, according to comScore’s PreAct results. That puts it at No. 1, ahead of Lucasfilm’s “Rogue One,” which has a total of 928,764 conversations when counted earlier this week.
Also Read: 'Rogue One' Surpasses 'Suicide Squad' in Weekly Social Buzz
The film revolves around DC super villains who are on death row for their crimes until a secret government agency called Task Force X led by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) assigns them black ops missions in exchange for clemency.
“Suicide Squad” also stars Ben Affleck, Joel Kinnaman, Jay Hernandez, Jai Courtney and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje.
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