It was a close weekend at the box office as the Suicide Squad battled animated food and dragons for the top spot. Suicide Squad came out victorious finishing in first with $43.7 million, Sausage Party brought in an impressive $33.6 million and Pete’s Dragon rounds out the top three with $21.5 million. The rest of the top 10 is filled in by Jason Bourne, Bad Moms, The Secret Life of Pets, Star Trek Beyond, Florence Foster Jenkins, Nine Lives and Lights Out.
Suicide Squad staying on top for a second weekend may seem impressive but it suffered a steep drop of 67.3%. This is in line with Batman v Superman‘s 69.1% drop; a trend that is surely disappointing Warner Bros execs, especially when movies like Captain America: Civil War and Deadpool had drops of 59.5% and 57.4% respectively. The fact that DC movie’s legs are continuously non-existant is a sure sign that the movies aren’t connecting with audiences; the DC movies open up big and then fall off the charts fast. Warner Bros needs to change the quality in these DC movies if they want a true box office juggernaut like Marvel has.
On the flip side, Sausage Party had a great weekend as it exceeded expectations. The R-rated animated comedy was expected to only gross something in the teen range, but it doubled said expectations. This was surely helped by the solid reviews the movie received. Word-of-mouth seems to be good for the film, so it will be interesting to see how well this odd movie performs. If it continues to do well, perhaps we will start seeing more R-rated animated fare?
Disney’s latest live action remake, Pete’s Dragon, had a decent weekend. The film didn’t blow up the box office like The Jungle Book did earlier this year, but it did well for one of Disney’s “lesser” movies in their slate. While some may compare its opening to The BFG‘s, it’s important to note that Pete doesn’t have as much riding on it as BFG. Pete’s budget was a small $65 million compared to BFG’s $140 million. Disney could have yet another hit on their hands if the movie has steady legs, albeit a small one.
Disney received another victory this weekend as Finding Dory is now the 7th highest grossing film domestically, passing up Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. The mega hit is slowly losing its steam, but still doing great at the box office. Maybe it’s singing “Just keep swimming” to itself?
