GameSpot may receive revenue from affiliate and advertising partnerships for sharing this content and from purchases through links.

Suicide Squad No. 1 Again as Ben-Hur Tanks

The DC Comics movie has been the top film at the US box office for three straight weeks.

41 Comments

The weekend box office figures are in and Suicide Squad remained No. 1 for a third straight week in the US, while the new Ben-Hur came in low.

Suicide Squad pulled in $20.7 million for the weekend, according to Deadline, which has a full report of the weekend's box office figures. It becomes the fifth movie this year to stay at No. 1 for three straight weekends, following Deadpool, Zootopia, The Jungle Book, and Finding Dory.

No Caption Provided

Finishing No. 2 this weekend was Sausage Party ($15.1 million), which was in its second weekend. The R-rated War Dogs, starring Jonah Hill and Miles Teller, pulled in $14.3 million to come in at No. 3.

Rounding out the top five for the US box office were Kubo and the Two Strings ($12.6 million) and Ben-Hur ($11.35 million). As Deadline notes, Ben-Hur's start is not very encouraging, given the movie had a $100 million production budget. It made another $10.7 million internationally, but it's still apparently considered a poor result.

According to one marketer speaking to Deadline, Paramount and MGM could have done a better job marketing Ben-Hur to the faithful. "Faith is not a niche," said Matthew Faraci, the president of faith crowd marketing agency Inspire Buzz. "Therefore, in a situation where the content is well-crafted and faithful but there is lower-than-expected box office performance, you have to take a serious look at the marketing strategy and analyze how it fell short in driving turnout and convincing folks to show up."

Suicide Squad has now made more than half a billion dollars at the box office, globally. Go to Deadline to see a full recap of this weekend's box office performance.

A Ben-Hur movie tie-in game was also released and well...you might not want to play it.

Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com

Join the conversation
There are 41 comments about this story