Despite some glowing reviews (including from us here), it appears that Birds of Prey is not the weekend darling.
Currently sitting at a domestic opening gross of 33 million. You’ve undoubtedly seen articles lambasting this opening as the worst opening in the DCEU.
This is partially true, especially when we look at the contemporary releases that debuted this last year. Shazam opened with a rock solid 51million and Aquaman which opened 64 million.
While this may seem like bad news for the ecstatic femme fatale outing, there are some very important factors to consider here.
Firstly is the fact that while Birds of Prey opened rather poorly. It has more than made up for it since then with a rock solid 82 million weekend gross. And the weekend isn’t over yet.
Birds of Prey is also much less advertised than its partners were. And that is primarily because of the cost of the production budget. Birds of Prey was done for a rather low budget of 84 million.
Aquaman reportedly cost close to 170 million to produce, while Shazam came in at 100 million in its budget. So taking that into account, Birds of Prey may seem to have been an opening day flop, it actually performed rather similarly to these two in numbers.
It should be noted that a big budget film (which BoP narrowly falls into), rarely ever makes back its budget in the first day of releases.
While Birds of Prey may have become an easy target for its day 1 ticket sales, it has narrowed the gap rather quickly. And odds are, if only due to the warm reception, this is most likely the type of content we’ll see from DC going forward.
You know what? That sounds just fine by us!
Check out the review for Birds of Prey here.
Birds of Prey is in theaters now!
