In case you hadn’t noticed, David Ayer’s supervillain team-up movie “Suicide Squad” just opened, and it took in a huge amount of money. Breaking the record for the biggest August opening ever, and standing as the twentieth biggest opening weekend of 2016 with $133 million, it’s the kind of start that other studios dream of, particularly in a rotten box office summer like this one. And it comes on the heels of the Warner Bros. and DC Films‘ “Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice,” which made $870 million worldwide earlier this spring.
And yet despite having what will clearly be two of the top-grossing movies of the year, it doesn’t seem like Warner Bros. will be popping all that many champagne corks. ‘Batman v Superman’ also opened big, but with atrocious reviews and a poor response from audiences, the studio knows it didn’t land the way it should have. And while “Suicide Squad” was supposed to be corrective of sorts, a film that confirmed WB had an understanding of the source material and fan expectations to deliver something that would be more universally enjoyed, it was received just as poorly as its predecessor. And after three films (including 2013’s “Man Of Steel“) what should have been Warner Bros. slam dunk franchise success is now a major problem for the studio. And it’s beginning to become difficult to keep track of just all the ways in which they’ve fumbled nearly every aspect of their approach to these films so far.
Some might say that this doesn’t matter, that these movies are still making money hand over fist. But these films are enormously expensive. ‘Batman v Superman’ cost at least $250 million without marketing, while “Suicide Squad” had a bill somewhere in the neighborhood of $170 million without marketing and before the extensive reshoots. It’s been widely reported that ‘Dawn Of Justice’ had to earn $900 million to be theatrically profitable, and “Suicide Squad” needs about $800 million. Zack Snyder’s film just missed the mark, and without the Chinese release that added nearly $100 million to the ‘Batman V. Superman’ total, “Suicide Squad” will likely fall short of its target too (we’d guess a final sum of about $700 million).
Warner Bros. will eventually turn a profit on these films thanks to home video and licensed products, with Bloomberg estimating that ‘Dawn Of Justice’ will earn about $278 million once other revenue streams are taken into account. But that’s less than what “Man Of Steel” tallied up, and “Suicide Squad” will likely be less still. Marvel are spending similar sums on their biggest films, but they’re also making substantially more money in theaters.
But more crucially, Marvel has engendered far more goodwill. The narrative has been for a long time that critics don’t matter, but one only has to look at the drop-offs on the last two DC movies — a 69% drop for ‘Batman v Superman’ from its first weekend to its second weekend, a 40% dip from Friday to Saturday for “Suicide Squad” — to see that the reviews, and an audience that at least in part aligns with the critics’ view, make a difference. Opening weekends have always been a metric of how effective the marketing campaign was, but your long tail is about how much people like the movie and whether or not they tell others to go see it.
Whatever the flaws of the Marvel movies are, they are generally liked by audiences. They get middling-to-good reviews, moviegoers enjoy the humor and seeing their favorite characters show up, and while the consistency of the Marvel movies might seemingly prevent them from hitting true greatness, it’s enabled them to become a reliable, trusted brand. And it means that audiences are willing to take a chance on a riskier proposition like “Ant-Man” or “Guardians Of The Galaxy,” while continuing to turn up in droves for the big team-up films featuring the major players.
Certainly, Warner Bros. and DC are trying to very hard to earn back the confidence of the faithful, as shown in their massive presentation at San Diego Comic Con last month. And in some ways, it has worked. Reaction to the “Wonder Woman” trailer has been ecstatic, and flying journalists to the set of “Justice League,” and following it up with a trailer that suggests a more light-hearted movie than ‘Batman v Superman,’ did what they were meant to do and started to sell an audience on the idea that lessons have been learned.
But those expecting these films to take a sudden, huge turnaround from the vibe of ‘Batman v Superman’ and “Suicide Squad” are likely to be disappointed. “Wonder Woman” started filming months before the negative reaction to Zack Snyder’s film, and Snyder himself (who shares a “story by” credit on “Wonder Woman,” possibly explaining the slight “Sucker Punch” vibe from the trailer) was well into prepping “Justice League,” and just weeks from filming, when the reviews for ‘Batman v Superman’ hit. These movies were already planned out, either already filming or in extensive pre-production, and short of shutting things down and starting again, there’s only so much you can do to change the core of these movies, as “Suicide Squad” proved.
It could have gone so differently for Warner Bros. DC characters essentially birthed the superhero movie on the big-screen with Richard Donner’s “Superman” and Tim Burton’s “Batman,” and in the 2000s, Christopher Nolan’s Bat-trilogy brought a new level of critical acclaim to the genre, with “The Dark Knight” earning eight Oscar nominations and becoming the highest-grossing superhero movie ever at the time, and by quite some distance too.
Once he was finished with “The Dark Knight Rises,” Nolan didn’t want to stick around and make more superhero movies, and while he lent his input on “Man Of Steel,” and took an executive producer credit on that film and ‘Batman v Superman,’ he’s pretty much moved on. However, Warner Bros. attempted to continue his more adult-oriented, dark and gritty style. But the $1.5 billion success of Marvel’s “The Avengers” coupled with “Man Of Steel” underperforming changed things, and whatever plans there might have been for a crossover mega-franchise were accelerated. Reportedly, the idea for ‘Batman v Superman’ came together literally in the days before it was announced at the 2013 San Diego Comic Con, only a month or so after “Man Of Steel” opened in cinemas.