It’s no secret that the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) films always struggle to compete with the incredible ticket sales of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films. Although in the past two years, the trend of ticket sales of DCEU films in the first week is getting better, the latest film from DCEU, Birds of Prey is recorded as the DCEU film with the lowest ticket sales in its first week.

Starring Margot Robbie and directed by Cathy Yan failed to meet the expected ticket sales target. The film which began airing on February 5, is only able to bring in $33.25 million, far behind the expected sales of $50 million from its first week.

As mentioned previously, the ticket sales of Birds of Prey in its first week is the lowest ticket sales during its first week in DCEU’s history, which was started by Man of Steel in 2013. Quoted from Vanity Fair, this is a significant decline, considering the DCEU’s last film, Shazam! was able to bring in $53 million in its first week.  

The fact that the low ticket sales from the Suicide Squad spin-off is actually quite strange, considering that Birds of Prey actually gained positive reviews from the film critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, this film scores 80 percent fresh and also on CinemaScore, this film gets B+.

The Cause of the Low Rating of Birds of Prey

Many people think that the low audience of Birds of Prey in its first week is because the rating of this film which is intended for adult audiences (R-rated).

In the past years, R-rated superhero films like Joker, Deadpool and Hogan are indeed received a positive reception. With rated R, those films were able to raise heavy and mature themes freely for the sake of the story.  

Unfortunately, the same recipe didn’t work for Birds of Prey. The film critics assume that the fans of Harley Quinn are mostly teenagers so they cannot watch this movie because of the film is R rating.

In fact, although the character Harley Quinn has the dark backstory, there are still many ways to present Birds of Prey film well without categorizing it into the mature category.

Quoted from Forbes, it is highly possible that the film failure, which features the female supergroup, is due to coronavirus outbreak. Due to coronavirus, the film distributed by Warner Bros. was unable to do promotional tours to Europe. This is considered to be the cause of the low sales of this film.  

The Future of DCEU films After Birds of Prey

This “failure” is clearly become a big question mark for the future of the DCEU films. After having the positive trend for the few last films, the ticket sales of DCEU film has decreased again.

Judging from the schedule announced by Warner Bros, the closest DCEU film to be released after this is Wonder Woman 84 which is scheduled to be released this June, followed by Aquaman 2 in December 2020. It remains a mystery whether Warner Bros. will change the release date schedule for their films after Birds of Prey.

Hopefully, this is only a temporary failure and the next upcoming DCEU films will receive better reception so that the fans of DC comic don’t need to worry their favorite characters disappear from the big screen.

For more exciting news about games and entertainment, follow Dunia Games.

FANPAGE FACEBOOK: Duniagames

INSTAGRAM: @duniagames.co.id

LINE@: @duniagames

YOUTUBE: Dunia Games