Friday Estimates: Suicide Sets August Daily Record with $65.13 million

August 6, 2016

Nine Lives

As expected, Suicide Squad broke the record for the biggest day in August with $65.13 million on Friday. Its opening day to preview multiplier was 3.17, which is not that much worse than the 3.28 earned by Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014. This is surprising, as Suicide Squad’s reviews have fallen to just 26% positive, while Guardians of the Galaxy earned 91% positive reviews. You would think word-of-mouth would tank Suicide Squad. Granted, it is just one day and perhaps it will fall as fast as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice did throughout the rest of the weekend. Or perhaps moviegoers liked the movie significantly more than critics did. Its CinemaScore was a B+, which is not good, but not terrible. Or perhaps the lack of A-list comic book characters means it wasn’t able to get the average moviegoer as excited as they were for BvS, so it won’t be as front-loaded despite the worse reviews. Given this opening day, the film is on pace for $137 million, according to our model, which is on the very high end of expectations. That said, things might change tomorrow when we get the weekend estimates: the model’s range of uncertainty goes from $119 million at the low end to $154 million at the high end.

Unfortunately, Jason Bourne was pummeled by the competition and fell more than 70% Friday-over-Friday to just $6.56 million. It will recover over the weekend, but a 65% sophomore stint drop-off to roughly $21 million is likely. The film will still reach $100 million during its second weekend of release, but it is clear it won’t have the same legs as the previous releases in the franchise.

It looks like Bad Moms will avoid a 50% drop-off after making $4.5 million on Friday, putting it on pace for $13 million over the weekend. Films aimed at a female audience tend to have better legs, but this is still very impressive. It should finish its run with $75 million, which is more than enough to break even.

The final film to talk about is Nine Lives. The film had previews on Thursday, but the studio didn’t bother to report numbers, which is a really bad sign. We do have its Friday number and it is $2.37 million. ... I guess it could have been worse. The film’s Tomatometer Score is in the single-digit range, but it earned a B+ with CinemaScore. It might open with just over $7 million, but just under $7 million is more likely.

- Suicide Squad Comparisons
- Nine Lives Comparisons

Filed under: Friday Estimates, Jason Bourne, Suicide Squad, Bad Moms, Nine Lives, Bourne