Tragic reviews aside, the DC Comics film Suicide Squad broke an opening weekend record and pulled in decent box office numbers, which means people are down to see presumably sucky movies. This bodes well for the DC universe even though, as Time Warner’s CEO hinted at recently, DC films have been pretty bad so far.
Both Suicide Squad (which has grossed over $731 million worldwide) and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (over $542 million so far)—released under Warner Bros.—were rightly panned by critics but clearly raked in money nevertheless. Even some within the Warner organization can agree that the content of the DC films could be better (The Dark Knight being a wild exception). During a Q&A at a Goldman Sachs investor conference last week, Jeff Bewkes said there’s “a little room for improvement” and said the DC characters “have a little more lightness in them than maybe what you saw in those movies, so we’re thinking about that.”
Bewkes made sure to note that the marketing for those movies were fine. “The strategy worked,” he said. “The execution did deliver what we wanted to do.” But, “We can do a little better on the creative.” Bewkes added, “We’re right on course or better.” The prognosis is... positive? Among comic and film buffs, the consensus is that the story execution in Marvel films (Iron-Man, Avengers, etc.) have so far been superior. The next possibly terrible but potentially lucrative DC franchises heading to film are Wonder Woman and Justice League.