Disappointing The Suicide Squad box office debut is not a good look for the DCEU

Before anything else, let's talk about some good news first: The Suicide Squad topped the box office during its premiere weekend.

The R-rated comic book movie was projected to be a must-watch. So far, this has indeed been the case. Unfortunately, the bad news is that not a lot of people showed up to watch The Suicide Squad. It didn't even break pandemic box office records.

Analysts were expecting The Suicide Squad to achieve more than $30 million in the local box office and $100 million worldwide. However, The Suicide Squad was only able to pull in $26.5 million from more than 4,000 theaters nationwide in the US. This is lower than Birds of Prey, another R-rated DCEU comic book movie that starred Margot Robbie at Harley Quinn and premiered in January 2020 (admittedly before the pandemic really hit).

With a rather disappointing $72.2 million global box office performance on a $185 million budget, The Suicide Squad will be lucky to recoup the costs of making and marketing it. In comparison, David Ayer's critically-panned Suicide Squad, which debuted in 2016, made $746 million worldwide.

Of course, you'd have to consider the context of The Suicide Squad's "measly" box office returns.

For one thing, The Suicide Squad premiered just as the fears of the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus are starting to peak. This means that audiences possibly have more of a reason to stay at home. Speaking of, The Suicide Squad was also available on HBO Max, so moviegoers didn't need to risk getting sick in order to watch The Suicide Squad. The latter is also an unexpected benefit.

Given the overwhelmingly positive reviews of The Suicide Squad, James Gunn's hybrid reboot/sequel should have at least pulled in decent viewership numbers on the aforementioned streaming platform.

Here's to hoping that indeed is the case - numbers for HBO Max are not available yet. Otherwise, this doesn't bode well for the future of The Suicide Squad in the DCEU.