R Rated movies starring young females in the sci-fi/action/horror area are very rarely lucrative. First problem.

It was a major problem making this as Harley Quinn's first starring movie, without her name as the title (obviously we're not counting the enormously stupid subtitle that no one remembers).

Birds of Prey should have come later. I enjoyed the 2002 tv series somewhat, but it was more of a guilty pleasure, and it only lasted one season. Harley Quinn is not even primarily associated with this team in the Batman universe. The title to general audiences probably sounds like a nature documentary or a bad horror flick.

Also as big of a fan as I am of all/most things Batman, I still have never seen the trailer that I recall - I haven't been to a ton of movies lately but I saw Charlie's Angels for example. The posters I notice are absolutely horrendous.

Name-wise there's no one else in the cast of the titular team who is known or compelling.

Side note: this weekend I was actually watching Beware the Batman (2013) this weekend, and almost totally forgot this movie was out.

When I see what Harley looks like in the marketing, I'm not interested. She does not have any of her classic looks, but rather looks like a drag queen version of herself in a pink lipstick summer girl power flick. It does not work at all.

Obviously it's not great that it came on the Oscar weekend of Phoenix's Joker, universally infinitely more liked than the Leto one associated with the Robbie Harley.

It was also touted by some as social justice trash, which a lot of people are not interested in.

In light of all this it's not surprising to me at all that it didn't light up the box office.

This is seriously the worst movie poster I can ever have recalled seeing.

It's 10x better than the Spider-Man Homecoming one.

I like that poster a lot. *shrug*

After seeing the movie I have to take this back. The marketing didn’t capture the energy of this movie. So I guess that’s what went wrong. Although I read it’s because they didn’t have much to work with given reshoots and such.

The R rating didn't fully match the content.

Also this is what happens when Margot Robbie has a few zany ideas for a film, and the studio just gives her freedom to do it, despite very few people around Robbie saying it was a good idea. A number of these ideas in the final film go against what fans like or wanted. Also fans in general really didn't want this film, and weren't really asking for this film. While some of Robbie's ideas were implemented, not all were based on insider word. WB execs apparently were furious after the first test screenings, as some of Robbie's ideas did not play well at all, so reshoots occurred to salvage the film.

The general audience would know very little about Robbie's inputs to the film. Tbh we know very little of how much of that info is true now that the movie flopped. It could be WB trying to pin the blame on Robbie to wash their hands. The desperate change in title sure feels that way.

We took the kids and their friend to see Sonic at the drive-in. They loved Sonic but at the same time they kept glancing over to the screen on the right and were hyped that Harley Quinn was on screen. While the R rating was probably essential, cant help but think they lost a chunk of the audience most interested in seeing the character in action.

Harley Quinn just isn't relevant/popular enough. Opening to about a third of Joker seems accurate. I think a PG-13 rating bumps it up to low 40s at the most.

Was it though? There’s no nudity and the violence isn’t that much crazier than PG13 superheroes.

They should have marketed it like the John Wick movies. And they probably should have just had it be a Harley Quinn title and have people not expect it to be a BoP film.

I haven't seen it so wasn't sure. Perhaps not. Missed opportunity then.

And agree with all - it should have been titled "Harley Quinn". Birds of Prey either pisses off fans or means nothing at all to the general public.

Yeah, there was really no reason for this to be rated R in light of the actual content.

I still don't think Harley Quinn is/was going to make much difference to its BO because they clearly marketed it as such regardless. They really should have released those reviews early to generate buzz OR should have somehow tried to connect it with other movies maybe even JP's joker. Having it connected to Leto's Joker didn't help it at all. The audience would not have wanted to jump on to a sinking ship.