(Photo: DC Entertainment)

Suicide Squad has had a tumultuous release week. Critics who saw the film in early screenings largely gave it mostly negative reviews, but the movie still set a new August record for Thursday night box office. The film followed that up with a stellar overall take on Friday but then dipped precipitously on Saturday. Despite the drop, the film still set a new August opening weekend box office record, but that record still falls short of the film’s projected box office take.

Despite all of the ups and downs, Warner Bros. seems pretty pleased with Suicide Squad’s performance.

“It bested anything that we could have expected,” Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros. distribution executive vice president told Variety. “The marketing campaign was brilliant and the performances by the cast, starting with Will Smith, Margot Robbie, and Jared Leto, were just extraordinary. They’re fun and wicked and fans enjoy it.”

As for the dissonance between critics and audiences, Goldstein said, “There’s a major disconnect with between what the critics are saying and what audiences are seeing.”

Warner Bros. is pleased for now, but it remains to be seen if Suicide Squad suffers a significant second-week box office drop-off of the kind that hurt Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and what that would mean for its lifetime box office gross.

It feels good to be bad…Assemble a team of the world’s most dangerous, incarcerated Super Villains, provide them with the most powerful arsenal at the government’s disposal, and send them off on a mission to defeat an enigmatic, insuperable entity. U.S. intelligence officer Amanda Waller has determined only a secretly convened group of disparate, despicable individuals with next to nothing to lose will do. However, once they realize they weren’t picked to succeed but chosen for their patent culpability when they inevitably fail, will the Suicide Squad resolve to die trying, or decide it’s every man for himself?

Suicide Squad is written and directed by David Ayer and stars Will Smith, Jared Leto, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Ike Barinholtz, Karen Fukuhara, Scott Eastwood and Cara Delevingne.

Suicide Squad is now playing in theaters.

---

Have you seen Suicide Squad yet? Want to win a Hot Toys Joker figure from the movie? All you have to do head on over to ComicBook.com's Movie Database or click the image above and rate the movie to enter! A winner will be chosen August 19th, 2016!