The war dramedy, earning a B CinemaScore, stars Miles Teller and Jonah Hill and is loosely based on the true story of two young Florida men who became global arms dealers during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
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The big bomb this weekend was Timur Bekmambetov’s take on Ben-Hur. Instead, Suicide Squad once again crushed the competition, holding on to the No. 1 spot with $20.7 million.
“Ben-Hur” drew a crowd that was 51% female and 94% over the age of 25.
The runaway hit of the back half of the summer has been The Secret Life of Pets which landed in ninth place this weekend with an estimated $5.7M, bringing its total up to an astounding $346M, surpassing Disney’s Zootopia to become the fifth highest grossing film of the year domestically. Numerous summer’s sequels and remakes have had only moderate sales because people simply weren’t excited about seeing a new version, he said.
Two other new releases, “War Dogs” and “Kubo and the Two Strings”, also couldn’t knock “Suicide Squad” off its third week in first place.
In its second weekend, Sony’s “Sausage Party” held strong, taking in $15.3 million, a drop of 55% from its debut. Summer movies including “Star Trek Beyond”, “Florence Foster Jenkins” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of the Shadows” also fell short of expectations at the box office.
Ben-Hur is still to be released in a few key markets, including United Kingdom and Korea, but it will need to do exceptionally well to recuperate its budget and marketing costs. The epic film did poorly over the weekend despite the roughly $100 million it spent to produce it.
The cast of “Suicide Squad” including Will Smith, Joel Kinnaman, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Karen Fukuhara, Margot Robbie, Cara Delevingne, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez and director David Ayer put the finishing touches on Graffiti artist Ryan Meades’ mural ahead of tomorrow’s film release on August 4, 2016 in London, United Kingdom. “He made a fun, smart movie that will leg out over the next few weeks”. Todd Phillips’ War Dogs is a comedy that was incorrectly promoted.
The continued success of “Suicide Squad” and “Sausage Party” lifted overall receipts almost 25% from the same weekend previous year – a period that saw the release of “Sinister 2” and “Hitman: Agent 47”. While not the biggest box office success, at least Kubo is guaranteed a Best Animated Feature nomination come Oscar time.
“Kubo and the Two Strings”, $12.6 million ($900,000 international).
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Disney’s “Pete’s Dragon” is now neck-in-neck with “Ben-Hur” for fifth place.
