The Suicide Squad crashed and burned in its second week at the domestic box office.
According to The-Numbers, the film only earned $7,471,391 in its second weekend.
That’s a 71% decline from its opening weekend where it only earned a measly $26,205,415. It’s a sharper decline than the first Suicide Squad movie. It only declined 67% from its opening weekend to its second weekend. It earned $133.6 million in its opening weekend and $43.5 million in its second weekend.
The most recent The Suicide Squad movie has only earned a total of $42.6 million at the domestic box office. It has earned $75.4 million at the international box office for a global total of $118 million.
However, those numbers are nowhere near the film’s production budget which Variety reports was $185 million. On top of that they claim the film spent “at least $100 million more on promotional efforts.”
While the film bombed at the box office, HBO Max chief Andy Forssell did claim the movie was the “second most viewed film over an opening weekend on HBO Max since we began day-and-date releases with theaters.”
HBO Max has not released official viewing numbers for the film. Samba TV claims only 363,000 U.S. households watched the film on HBO during its preview release on Thursday.
They then went on to report that 2.8 million US households watched the film during its first week. They revealed that the most popular day was Friday where 949,000 households watched the film.
In comparison, Samba TV reported that 2.4 million tuned into Amazon Prime Video’s The Tomorrow War, a film that did not have a theatrical release.
Related: The Suicide Squad Review: Was It Really Worth Dying To Save The World?
While Samba TV reported that 3.8 million people streamed Mortal Kombat on HBO Max in its first weekend.
Pundits and analysts are already spinning the crashing box office on the COVID Delta variant.
The-Numbers frankly states, “After some promising signs in May and June, the recovery of the theatrical market has stalled in recent weeks, most likely due to the growing effects of COVID’s Delta variant on movie fans’ enthusiasm for going to theaters.”
Box Office Pro also put blame on the Delta variant claiming, “The new iteration’s day-and-date release on HBO Max is clearly a factor in its theatrical underperformance, particularly with more and more moviegoers choosing to stay home due to the widespread Delta variant.”
While they may be putting the blame on the variant, the film hasn’t performed all that well with audiences.
The Cinema Score is a B+. The audience rating on IMDB is a 7.5 out of 10 from 139,936 users. And the All Audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is 78%.
It’s also possible audiences were turned off by John Cena’s recently groveling to the communist Chinese as well as the drama surrounding the film’s director James Gunn.
What do you make of The Suicide Squad’s crashing numbers? Do you think it’s all to blame on the Delta variant?