Why Birds Of Prey Just Disappointed At The Box Office

It used to be that whatever was released in January in February was immediately deemed graveyard fodder, because studios used the early months of the year to send things out quietly to die. That much has changed in recent years thanks to the perpetual extension of the summer blockbuster period and the unquenchable thirst for comic book movies that has meant staggering releases to avoid competition is as big a part of the marketing campaign as the trailers.

These days, a great release in February is licence to print money, precisely because the early months graveyard slot still does exist. if you get it right, you're laughing because there's simply no real competition aside from Oscar re-releases for the most part.

So with that in mind, Warner Bros' decision to release Birds Of Prey into cinemas in February should have been a genius move that paid off in spades. This was, after tall, the return of Harley Quinn - the one shining light of Suicide Squad - in a film sculpted so firmly around her presence that the title was horribly extended to include her. It's called front-loading your brand and you can absolutely forgive the studio for doing it - after all, Birds Of Prey means very little to mainstream audiences, while Harley Quinn was part of a notorious but lucrative DCEU movie.

Stack on top of Harley's presence the fact that Birds Of Prey was initially presented as a counter-point to Suicide Squad - and a conscious attempt to undo the sins of that mess of a film - and also a palate-cleanser to rid the world finally of Jared Leto's Joker and there was even more reason for box office wizards to predict a big opening.

Now that the film is out, though, those figures don't seem to have materialised.

4. Why It's Disappointing

It's not like the film is an absolute Dolittle-sized bust, by any means, but the $33.2M stateside and $81.2M worldwide opening is very much being called a disappointment. That's largely down to the fact that projections had the domestic opening tracking at $50M-$55M and Warner Bros allegedly wanted $45M with an overseas forecast of over $110m. They might seem like numbers plucked out of the air, but there's a precise science to them.

Projections now have a domestic box office failing to hit $100m, which isn't entirely disastrous, but it's bad, particularly with the Chinese market wiped out by the coronavirus.

Strangely, this isn't one you can pinpoint on critical malaise - as we could have with Suicide Squad if that had died a death on release - because the RottenTomatoes score on release was 81% and the CinemaScore was at B+, which is exactly what Joker pulled in and also where Suicide Squad sat. Those movies made an absolute fortune, but Birds Of Prey seems to be lagging.

Almost like something else has clipped their wings.

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