Did the movie stumble? Or is it something else?
Despite the best-laid plans of Hollywood studio and cinema operators, the movie theater business is still struggling to mount a recovery from COVID-19.
For a while, the box office looked poised for a comeback, with a string of pandemic-era record opening weekends, including “A Quiet Place Part II” ($48 million), “F9” ($70 million) and “Black Widow” ($80 million) in June and July. Despite a few well-timed theatrical hits, multiplexes aren’t home free yet.
The persistent uphill battle that faces the film industry was illuminated last weekend with the release of “The Suicide Squad.” The R-rated comic book adaptation had all the makings of a box office hit: stellar reviews, charismatic super-villains and the cinematic anomaly of Sylvester Stallone as a digitized shark. However, the Warner Bros. movie fell short of expectations, earning $26.5 million in its first three days of release in North America. “The Suicide Squad” generated another $35 million internationally, taking its overall tally to $72.2 million. Those figures, while not entirely unexpected considering the ongoing pandemic, are disappointing because the studio spent a massive $185 million to produce the film, and at least $100 million more on promotional efforts, in the hopes of steering its DC property in a direction that’s both critically and commercially viable.
So what went wrong?
