“Suicide Squad” Drops While “Sausage Party” Grows

As is now customary, every big debut is accompanied by a big drop. But Suicide Squad's was bigger than others. Falling more than 67 percent, the only superhero movies to fall harder in the past year were Fantastic Four and Batman v Superman. Had Warner Bros. not spent an obscene amount on marketing, not put all their hopes and dreams into this as the future of their DC franchises and not had absurd expectations, Suicide Squad would be looked at as a success story in spite of lousy reviews. A comic book flick featuring mostly unknown characters makes nearly $225 million in 10 days? That's huge. Except WB needed it to make nearly $350 million domestically just to break even. This is the same studio that's looking at Batman v Superman as a disappointment because it failed to make $1 billion worldwide. That's some atrocious bottom-line thinking that probably factored into both films' less than stellar reception.

Sausage Party, on the other hand, is the big success story. The absolutely filthy animated comedy beat even the most optimistic expectations, raking in an estimated $33.6 million. That makes it the biggest debut for an R-rated animated comedy (a short list, admittedly) and it should easily beat South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut to reign supreme in that category.

Pete's Dragon, though based on a less beloved property to be sure, debuted the lowest of any of Disney's recent string of remakes by far. Its $21.5 million isn't even half of the likes of Cinderella or The Jungle Book or even the Sleeping Beauty-adjacent Maleficent. But that was more than enough for the 3-spot, ahead of the quickly fading Jason Bourne and Bad Moms.

Outside the top 5:

• This Weekend's Indie Champ: Hell or High Water, the acclaimed Western thriller about brothers who become bank robbers. Starring Chris Pine, Ben Foster and Jeff Bridges, the film averaged a whopping $18,500 on 32 screens.
• Meryl Streep wowed a much older crowd as the titular character in Florence Foster Jenkins. The comedy about the terrible singer debuted at No. 8 with about $6.5 million. Still, it should have legs throughout the fall.
• After nine weekends, Finding Dory has finally cemented its place. It just passed Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace to become the 7th highest-grossing movie ever.

Next week:

Ben-Hur's in a big race... to not be the summer's biggest flop. Kubo and the Two Strings, the latest from the highly acclaimed but financially underperforming animation studio Laika, also opens. And then there's War Dogs, which is Todd Phillips' attempt to make comedy out of real-life crime. I think all three will come up short for the No. 1 title. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there will be such big "You won't believe what I just saw" word-of-mouth for Sausage Party that it ends up at No. 1 despite dropping a bit. Dog days of summer, folks.