![]() The film, nor she, isn’t very funny, or riveting in their action. What does Harley Quinn sell? Captain Marvel beat any deeper universe stigma first in her brand name, and second, the film was a bridge between the highest-grossing Avengers movies all time. ![]() Others in the field say in the spree of bad-ass chick films that have struggled at the box office or didn’t fully pop out ( Atomic Blonde, The Rhythm Section, Alita: Battle Angel), Harley Quinn is a bad-ass, and then what? Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel exude heroism in their sell. Some in distribution circles question, though, whether the DC bad girl has a big enough following to warrant her own movie. It stands to reason that a spinoff would be greenlit, and she was a force behind getting this movie off the ground. What’s baffling here is that Margot Robbie made Suicide Squad fun with Harley Quinn, and arguably a commercial success. While spinoffs in their grosses have traditionally shown to be down in their grosses from the core franchise (i.e., Hobbs & Shaw‘s $60M opening was off 39% from Fate of the Furious’ first weekend, and Fantastic Beasts was off 56% from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2‘s first weekend), for Birds of Prey to be off 75% from Suicide Squad‘s record August debut of $133.6M raises many questions on whether the movie should have been greenlit in the first place. ![]() It’s a brand, and that’s a lot of money to spend, according to finance sources, on a movie that’s intended to be an event film in the offseason. Some will argue that Birds of Prey was never meant to be a big pic like Suicide Squad with its lower-than-DC-budget (around $97M gross, $84M net). This isn’t great for Birds of Prey, even if it miraculously muscles its way past $40M this weekend. At a time when Marvel can slap their name atop any superhero movie and open it to $100M-plus, DC has been trying to rebuild post-Zack Snyder’s Batman v. These decisions need to be thought of long and hard during development. ![]() What is crucial for Warner Bros, and any other major motion picture studio that wants to compete and rival Disney, is that when it comes to brands and IP, you need to protect them and really ensure the proper production and launch apparatuses are in place to guarantee success (I’ll come back to this point). Rivals believe the exits are alright, just not the kind that take you over the top at the box office. And even though the town loves to use tracking as “the dog ate my homework” excuse whenever a film collapses at the box office, they’re not the ones to blame here for Birds of Prey. Despite Birds of Prey in its final days before opening notching an 81% certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, a 4-star PostTrak, and B+ CinemaScore audience exits (same as Suicide Squad and Joker), all of those spurs, which typically work for pics on the big screen, weren’t doing any favors this weekend. The domestic opening is well under the $50M-$55M tracking projection, and under the $45M for which Warner Bros was hoping for, while overseas the forecast was at least $110M. That belongs to the Josh Brolin 2010 western Jonah Hex ($5.3M). This wasn’t the lowest DC opening of all-time for Warner Bros. ![]() 4th UPDATE, Sunday AM w/final chart: In the wake of hitting highs with Wonder Woman, Aquaman and the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all-time in the 11-time Oscar-nominated and billion-dollar-plus grossing Joker, Warner Bros’ DC hit a pothole with the Suicide Squad spinoff Birds of Prey, opening well below projections with $33.2M stateside and $81.2M worldwide ( $48M from 78 offshore territories). ![]()
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