So
@Lerticus what did you think of Birds of Prey? I thought it was alright, more than a bit overhyped. Not sure if it broke even or made a profit while in theaters.
They didn't seem to have as massive of an ad budget as some of the other DC movies, but conventional wisdom turns the $220M gross into a $75M net, not counting ads and such. With an $85M budget it might have broken even on later digital sales, but probably not on the theater run. Can't really call it a Covid problem, since it came out while things were still mostly under control.
My thought are that it was... OK. Entertaining, but not the kind of movie that I would watch over and over again. Not as deep as it pretended to be, which was a trend with the movie in general.
Part of the losses likely came from the whacky and confusing title. Most people don't know the Birds of Prey, so they instead made it a Harley Quinn movie. But instead of calling it Harley Quinn they just tacked her into the tail end of the title. Which then made people wonder if the trailers were lying, and it was just showing the Harley parts in a movie about people they don't know.
These kind of confusing decisions lost them sales, guaranteed. Eventually they tried to do damage control and renamed it in theaters
Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, but by then the potential sales had already been lost.
Which should mean a lot. Social media and reviewers were really whoring themselves out for the movie, declaring it to be one of the best things ever. That should have boosted sales, but WB's marketing and the strange title countered that influence. Then again, I think some people just avoided the movie because of the over-the-top enthusiasm from annoying fans.
The movie was fine. Not bad, not great, but fine.