Box Office: Suicide Squad does biggest ever August opening

Weekend box office for the top 20 movies totalled $23.82m which was up 40% on the previous weekend. Suicide Squad was luring people into cinemas as it accounted for well over half of the weekend total. The $23.82m weekend was the fourth biggest weekend of the year with the other weekends all enjoying the bonus of holiday periods – school holidays, Easter and early January.

#1 Suicide Squad $13.90m

A massive opening performance saw the movie launching on 516 screens, which was fewer than the 554 screens Jason Bourne opened on just a week ago. Suicide Squad's screen average of $26,947 was the second best of the year, trailing only the $37,736 Deadpool managed on its opening weekend back in February. Suicide Squad's opening day of $3.2m is the best August opening ever and it is also the biggest August weekend ever. The only bigger opening weekends this year were Captain America: Civil War with $13.96 and Deadpool with $14.94m.

#2 Jason Bourne $3.58m

The second weekend for the latest in the Bourne franchise shed 71 screens to 483 with a weekend average of $7,430.

#3 Absolutely Fabulous $2.76m

The opening weekend delivered the second-best weekend average of $7,476, but it was a long way behind the leader. The comedy opened on 370 screens and had the benefit of an Aussie promo visit from the two stars.

#4 Star Trek Beyond $744,956

The movie shed 130 screens this week and returned a screen average of $2,729.

#5 Ghostbusters $708,706

The movie is now on less than 300 screens as it delivered a fourth weekend screen average of $2,625. To-date it has returned close to $11.5m in this market.

Best of the rest: Finding Dory continues to hover in the top 10 with 175 screens last weekend with $255,000. Its total to-date will pass $48m this week which is the third-best performance of any movie in the past two years.