‘Suicide Squad’ Gunning For August & Will Smith Opening Records – Box Office

Warner Bros. Suicide Squad hit the tracking boards today with opening weekend projections in the $125M realm. Even if the film grosses north of $95M it will still be a record opening for the month of August, beating Disney/Marvel’s The Guardians of the Galaxy which woke up the final sleepy summer month two years ago with a three-day of $94.3M.

“It’s huge across all quadrants,” exclaimed a non-Warner Bros. executive this morning about Suicide Squad, “demographically it looks like Deadpool.” That film, though a satirical R-rated title, opened to $132.4M.  Suicide Squad we understand has a very different tone. Suicide Squad is strongest among males in first choice with an overall definite interest of 57% (which is big for that category).

In addition to breaking an August record, Suicide Squad would also mark a three-day opening record for Will Smith, his all-time debut belonging to 2007’s I Am Legend ($77.2M). For a few weeks now, ComScore’s PreAct which monitors social media buzz has been seeing a lot of chatter for Suicide Squad as it has been outstripping other July releases like Ghostbusters and Star Trek Beyond, as well as other titles which are months away from their opening dates. In addition, rival distributors have also been highly anticipating Suicide Squad as the film that will save what has been a lackluster summer with a slew of big budget stateside bombs (read, The BFG, Warcraft, Alice Through the Looking Glass to name a few)

For several months during 2014, Guardians of the Galaxy remained the highest grossing movie of the year with $333.2M at the domestic B.O., ultimately being unseated by Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 ($337.1M) and then finally American Sniper ($350.1M, which literally crossed during 2015 when the bulk of its wide release was in play).