Suicide Squad Was Among Top Five Most Profitable Summer Movies

With over $300 million at the domestic box office and nearly $700 million worldwide, Suicide Squad has become one of the five most profitable summer movies of 2016, according to Bloomberg.

In a report that highlighted the high-stakes games studios are playing with big-budget blockbusters, especially those with the built-in extra cost and baggage of being remakes, sequels, or otherwise licensed intellectual property, the finance and culture site declared the DC film one of a handful of big hits in a crowded field of summer bombs that included Ben-Hur, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, and Alice Through the Looking Glass.

Suicide Squad, the latest outing for the DC Extended Universe and a movie that was eviscerated by critics, looks to have earned about $175 million in profit, driving half of the summer's $350 million profit for Warner Bros., making it the fourth most profitable film of 2016 behind the somewhat more obvious Finding Dory, Captain America: Civil War and The Secret Life of Pets, all of which were big hits with the critics.

Despite Bloomberg's caution about Hollywood's reliance on sequels, remakes, and adaptations, fo course, this means that both of the two most profitable films of 2016 were big-budget sequels to movies adapted from other media.

Disney was the year's most profitable studio, largely on the strength of those top two. Warner Bros. came in second, bolstered by Squad along with The Conjuring 2, Central Intelligence, Me Before You, and Lights Out.

Before the reviews started coming in, audience excitement for Suicide Squad was high, and so apparently was studio enthusiasm. Talks of either a Suicide Squad 2, a Harley Quinn spinoff, or both, have been teased since before the movie came out, and a $130 million opening cemented Suicide Squad's fate.

Starring Will Smith as Deadshot, Margot Robbie as Harley, and Jared Leto as The Joker, Suicide Squad saw Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) assemble a team of supervillains to work as a black ops team for the U.S. government. The film cost around $175 million to make, and given the relatively low profile of both the Suicide Squad property and most of the individual characters in the film, there was a lot of curiosity about how well it would perform -- especially after a profitable-but-disappointing performance by Warners' previous DC outing, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, back in the spring.

These numbers will, of course, continue to shift: Suicide Squad and other movies on the list are still in theaters, and studios have disputed the reported losses on movies like Ghostbusters and War Dogs. The Bloomberg report, though, is handy as a big-picture guide to what this year's box office looked like in general terms.