Walsh asks why Sausage Party did better than Suicide Squad

In the first two weeks of August, two very different movies premiered. The $175 million DC superhero epic Suicide Squad and the low budget R rated animated comedy, Sausage Party, both premiered within a week of each other, but one’s gross has more than tripled its budget and the other is struggled to pay for itself. It seems clear that the raunchy, low brow comedy movie is struggling to pay for itself, and the big, hyped up and well advertised DC movie has demolished the box office. Well, that’s not exactly the case, Suicide Squad is floundering in the box office, and Sausage Party has been a huge success, thanks to its high critical ratings, its modern marketing tactics, and it’s broader target audience.

Critical Ratings:

Critical Ratings from two different major critical websites were in the toilet for Suicide Squad: a miserable 40% on Metacritic.com, and an absolutely dreadful 26% on RottenTomatoes.com; however, ratings were considerably higher for Sausage Party, scoring a 66% on Metacritic and an 83% on Rotten Tomatoes. The more selective IMDB review rated them much closer 6.8 and 7.1 out of 10, putting Suicide Squad on top. As a result of Sausage Party‘s Rating domination, undecided viewers went to see Sausage Party at the box office.

Marketing Tactics:

These two movies were marketed in a completely different way. While taking advantage of social media well, Suicide Squad‘s advertising was much more traditional, as it was a much more traditional comic book movie. Sausage Party; however, took advantage of much more daring advertisement, using social media much more, and mostly avoiding commercials. These more up to date marketing tactics put sausage party firmly in the forefront of the millennial mind.

Target Audiences:

Sausage Party was written for a much bigger audience than the relatively niche superhero audience. Anybody can laugh at a immature wiener jokes, but not everyone knows the intricacies of the DC Universe’s lesser known villains, and their personal comedic styles. This greatly narrows down the audience and limits the amount of people that will pay to go see it.

It has been one month since these movies came out, and still, Sausage Party continues to pay for itself time and time again, and Suicide Squad is still stumbling. Perhaps it is a fluke, or perhaps it is the start of a revolution.