Within the first month and half of this new year, 2020, the film industry has already had some big ups and some big downs. Unfortunately for the DC Comic’s spin-off movie of the 2016 major box office success, Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey has not been off to as successful of a start. It’s opening night only brought in $13 million which is about $120 million shy of Suicide Squad‘s $133.7 million opening weekend. Although Birds of Prey still has one more day to reel in some more views, about $13 million is nowhere near enough to make an impressive first impression. According to Allie Gemmill of Collider, “it is unclear why Birds of Prey is taking such a hit … [because] the film scored plenty of praise from critics and audiences alike.” With an 83% on Rotten Tomatoes and popular stars such as Margo Robbie playing Harley Quinn, the unimpressive opening weekend is a surprise to us all.
This article about Birds of Prey by Allie Gemmill is honest and semi-verifiable leading me to conclude that it is a decent review. Collider is a website that focuses on entertainment news, analysis, and commentary, along with original features according to Wikipedia. It has been under several people’s ownership including Complex and Marc Fernandez. The author, Allie Gemmill, was easily found on Muck Rack which is a website similar to LinkedIn, but specializing in public relations and hiring freelance journalists. Gemmill’s impressive resume on Muck Rack includes working for Disney and writing for TeenVouge, Yahoo, MSN, and more along with Collider. Because Gemmill has experience helping write scripts for TV shows and movies, her reviews for movies and the entertainment industry are deemed to have a substantial backing.
Throughout Allie Gemmill’s review on Birds of Prey release weekend, she hyperlinked all of her sources used to make statements in her article. Majority of the linked sources brought readers back to Collider with reviews and articles written by other journalists. These linked articles also include hyperlinks back to Collider along with some to Twitter using many verified voices speaking out on the same movie. It was disappointing to see that her sources consistently lead readers back to her employer’s pages. Without utilizing outside sources, it is difficult to feel as if Gemmill’s opinion is well-rounded and non-biased. It seems as if Collider is capitalizing on its journalists referencing back to themselves in order to gain more views in general.
Gemmill also utilizes numerical figures and comparisons to other box office hits that coincide with Birds of Prey such as DC Comic’s Suicide Squad featuring Margo Robbie as Harley Quinn. She ends the article with an up to date list of the weekend’s box office ranks to show how the movie performed in comparison to competing titles. Although Birds of Prey fell short from their DC Comic’s parent movie, it ranked number one in comparison to competing titles today such as Dolittle with Robert Downey Jr. and the new spin-off Bad Boys For Life.
One topic Gemmill did not touch on was Birds of Prey‘s advertisements leading up to its release this past weekend. Suicide Squad dedicated over $75 million of its budget to the campaign process according to Medium back in 2017. Regardless of how the film’s reviews actually played out, the excitement leading towards the release of the film created enough steam to gross over $745 million worldwide. The campaign process of a film is just as important, if not more, than the quality of the film itself. The buzz $75 million had the power to create for Suicide Squad made the movie that much more successful overall. The advertisements for Birds of Prey clearly fell short considering its first weekend barely broke the $10’s of millions. Finding more angles to report on rather than just facts and rankings regarding the newly released film would have given Gemmill’s review more substance. There is still a sliver of hope left for Birds of Prey, but typically, a film’s opening box office weekend speaks loudly within all the Hollywood gossip and chatter.
