8 Reasons Suicide Squad Became A Box Office Success (Despite Being Terrible)

3. A Relatively Small Budget

Success is relative. When two movies make just over $200 million worldwide and one cost $15,000, the other $170 million (before marketing), there’s a big difference in profitability and reputation (there’s a reason we’ve just got a new Blair Witch rather than Wild Wild West). The same is true for Suicide Squad, especially in relation to Batman V Superman.

David Ayer’s movie cost $175 million, while Snyder’s cost $250 million more (and that’s based on conservative estimates – by all reckoning the film's $800 million haul won’t cover all the costs). Now Suicide Squad is by no measure “cheap”, but it’s a considerably smaller investment than Dawn Of Justice, and that means that its success needn’t be as explosively large. It’s “smaller”, and as such needn’t have as big an impact to do well.

This isn’t exactly “why” the film did so well at the box office, but it does explain the difference in coverage to some of its contemporaries.