Defying critics as well as competition from two new releases, the DC comics-inspired ‘Suicide Squad’ topped the US box office for a second straight weekend, estimates from industry tracker Exhibitor Relations showed.
The action film, in which Will Smith, Jared Leto and Margot Robbie play a band of deadly criminals hired to carry out risky secret missions, chalked up $43.8 million in sales on North American screens over the three-day weekend.
That was down sharply from its opening weekend take of $133.7 million, but still enough to edge out new releases ‘Sausage Party’ and ‘Pete´s Dragon.’
‘Sausage Party,’ an animated adult comedy from Sony, with Seth Rogen voicing the lead meat product, is what Variety called “a madcap crazy salad of industrial-strength raunch.” It netted $33.6 million.
‘Pete´s Dragon’ tells the tale of an orphan boy and the (computer-animated) dragon who befriends him. Disney´s remake of the original 1977 film, this time with Robert Redford as one of the townspeople who believes in the elusive dragon, took in $21.5 million.
‘Jason Bourne,’ starring Matt Damon in the latest chapter of Universal’s enduring spy thriller, came in fourth, with $13.6 million.
And ‘Bad Moms,’ the bawdy comedy starring Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn as overworked and under-appreciated mothers who toss responsibility out the window, placed fifth, at $11.5 million.