Why The Suicide Squad Is A Box Office Disappointment

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The Suicide Squad was a box office disappointment despite receiving warmly positive reviews from both critics and audiences. The rise of the Delta variant in a marketplace that has already struggled to contend with COVID-19 certainly hurt ticket sales, but there are other factors that most likely contributed to the film's lackluster performance. Namely, the availability to watch the feature on HBO Max as well as confusing marketing created a poor commercial environment.

Notably, the relationship between the box office and critic reviews of The Suicide Squad is the complete opposite of the film's predecessor. Suicide Squad, the DCEU's first attempt at bringing the team of supervillains to the big screen, was a huge financial success when it debuted in August 2016. The film brought in a record-breaking $133.7 million in its domestic opening weekend and eventually went on to rake in a whopping $746.8 million worldwide, without releasing in China. On the other hand, critics lambasted the film, pointing out its muddled plot, weak handling of its central characters, and obvious studio interference in the work of director David Ayer.

RELATED: Every Possible DCEU Movie & Show The Suicide Squad Sets Up

The Suicide Squad, in contrast, has enjoyed significantly better reception as a more coherent movie with well-defined characters and conflicts as well as an overall more fully realized creative vision on the part of director James Gunn. In fact, the filmmaker ironically claimed the highest August box office earnings with his Marvel entry Guardians of the Galaxy before Ayer's Suicide Squad took over that spot. Despite its impressive critical achievements, Gunn's The Suicide Squad failed to receive as much financial success as either of these films, opening to a mere $26.5 million.

The Suicide Squad's Box Office Shows COVID's Continued Impact

The most obvious and arguably significant contributing factor to the poor box office performance of The Suicide Squad is the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has audiences hesitant to return to the movies. As theaters reopened across the country to coincide with an increased vaccine rollout at the beginning of the summer, box office numbers briefly saw a spike. Films like A Quiet Place: Part II and F9: The Fast Saga saw the largest openings in the span of the pandemic, and for a moment, it looked like audiences might be warming up to the idea of watching a summer blockbuster on a big screen surrounded by other moviegoers.

Then the Delta variant hit. A more contagious threat coincided with a decrease in vaccination rates and created yet another wave of COVID infections, leading to more anxiety about spending time in indoor public places like movie theaters. The Suicide Squad, positioned to release at a point at which COVID cases would have hopefully been under control, unfortunately encountered the opposite situation. Box office numbers had already been on a downward trend as summer moved on, with the tentpole Black Widow experiencing a massive drop in ticket sales after its opening weekend and every following film remaining below a $40 million opening mark. In this way, The Suicide Squad is just the latest casualty of an increasingly dire movie market.

How Did HBO Max Affect The Suicide Squad's Box Office?

However, it wasn't just COVID that contributed to The Suicide Squad's poor ticket sales. The film was part of Warner Bros.' unprecedented move to make theatrical releases available to watch on HBO Max the same day they came out in theaters. That means that those who were too nervous to go to the movies could instead watch The Suicide Squad from the safety of their own homes at no additional cost (unlike Disney+'s Premier Access, which includes a fee of $29.99 on top of the regular subscription price). That dual-release strategy, in fact, paints a larger and more complicated picture than what the lowly box office numbers suggest, as 2.8 million households gave the film the second-highest viewership numbers for the streaming service behind only Mortal Kombat.

RELATED: The Suicide Squad: Every Surviving Character's DCEU Future Explained

Streaming numbers indicate that The Suicide Squad isn't entirely a failure, nor is it by any means a success. Another HBO Max release, the critically acclaimed In the Heights, suffered at both the box office and on streaming, while films like The Suicide Squad and Mortal Kombat have found an alternative avenue of at least partial success. An important factor to consider is the latter films' R-ratings, a barrier to younger audiences who now have a way to access these films without sneaking into a theater. The real mark of success in streaming, however, is the number of new subscribers these releases brought in, a piece of data that hasn't been publicly available at this point regarding Warner Bros.' most recent release.

Did The Suicide Squad's Marketing & 2016 Connections Let It Down?

Another factor to consider in the poor performance of The Suicide Squad is just how geeky and confusing the film's background is. The decision to minimally reference the original Suicide Squad in marketing stirred up confusion about the identity of the film. On the other hand, characters like Harley Quinn, Amanda Waller, and Rick Flag were returning, further complicating the general moviegoer's perception of what, exactly, the movie was even about. Trailers and posters suggested that The Suicide Squad wasn't a sequel, but the presence of familiar faces made it clear that the film wasn't entirely a do-over, either. Those privy to the inside baseball maneuvers of the studio and the winding career of James Gunn were up-to-date on all the production details, but the average viewer was completely lost. "You don't know Squad," TV spots and YouTube ads cheekily proclaimed, underestimating how true that sentiment actually is.

Did The Suicide Squad Lack Movie Selling Points?

On that note, general audiences never latched onto anything specific about the new The Suicide Squad. Jared Leto's tattooed Joker was the subject of a barrage of Internet mockery, but he was a recognizable selling point. So was the presence of Will Smith and the promise that Suicide Squad would definitely connect to the at-that-time recently released Batman v. Superman. In contrast, Harley Quinn was the only widely identifiable trait of The Suicide Squad, and even she couldn't guarantee success considering the poor financial returns of her own Birds of Prey movie. Whether that's because audiences still associate her with a bad movie or if they simply can't mentally separate her from her abusive ex-boyfriend is still up in the air, but it certainly makes for further confusion. Big names like Idris Elba and John Cena didn't help because they were new cast members despite their star power, and even the name of the movie, which distinguished itself with the addition of a grammatical article, was confounding.

What The Suicide Squad's Box Office Means For The DCEU

The post-COVID release of films on both digital services and physical theaters complicates box office numbers in a way that the marketplace has previously never truly dealt with. In this way, the financial failure of The Suicide Squad might not be as apocalyptic as it looks. The film is still a critical hit, and it still has a chance to bring in streaming viewership through tried and true word-of-mouth. It also still opened at the top spot at the box office, meaning that it's at least not another Snake Eyes or In the Heights, both high-budget movies that didn't even reach first place on their opening weekend. Peacemaker, a spin-off television series, is still moving forward as an HBO Max exclusive, and DC Films has already confirmed that James Gunn will return for future DC movies. All of this indicates that the box office numbers are perhaps more indicative of the movie marketplace's suffering at large and implies that The Suicide Squad isn't entirely a unique bust. Most of all, it's far from a doomsday call for the DCEU.

NEXT: The Suicide Squad End-Credits Scenes & Spinoff Setup Explained

 Key Release Dates

The Batman (2022)Release Date: Mar 04, 2022

DC League Of Super-Pets (2022)Release Date: May 20, 2022

Black Adam (2022)Release Date: Jul 29, 2022

The Flash (2022)Release Date: Nov 04, 2022

Aquaman 2 (2022)Release Date: Dec 16, 2022

Shazam! Fury Of The Gods (2023)Release Date: Jun 02, 2023

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About The Author

Andrew Housman (138 Articles Published)

Andrew is a contributing features writer for Screen Rant Horror, as well as for Comic Book Resources. He enjoys trying to see what social commentary he can mine out of the latest horror films, as well as checking up on what's going on in the life of Spider-Man. He also plays bass guitar to exorcise his negative emotions, like the good Mr. Rodgers says you should.

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