Suicide Squad tops Batman v Superman as most-watched trailer

Despite being released three days later – and lacking the names of two of the most iconic superheroes of all time in its title – the trailer for Warner Bros.’ DC supervillain ensemble Suicide Squad has surpassed the number of YouTube views of fellow DC release Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, racking up 36.3 million views to date, compared to Batman v Superman’s 35 million.

While the numbers should certainly help to alleviate any concerns about Suicide Squad’s potential for box office success, they don’t quite tell the full story, given that they fail to include any non-official YouTube uploads, of which they are plenty. And of course, the Suicide Squad trailer was our first look at the movie – and our first look at Jared Leto’s Joker in action – whereas Batman v Superman already had a first teaser back in April, which has pulled in 45 million views itself. Still, there’s no doubt that it’s certainly an impressive feat…

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is set for release on March 25th 2016, while Suicide Squadwill follow on August 5th 2016.

For what it’s worth, both movies are owned by the same studio (Warner), and both outperformed everything else last week. The nearest competition was the intense trailer for Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy drama The Revenant with 11.8 million views.

To put this into perspective, Suicide Squad‘s first trailer garnered more views in its first week thanAvengers: Age of Ultron did in its first week (50.9M compared to 50.6M), but was less viewed than the first week of trailers for Jurassic World (53.9M) and Stars Wars: The Force Awakens (58.2M).

That puts Suicide Squad in some amazing company, and might mean the David Ayer directed film could draw a much larger audience than originally expected. Those are some nice #SquadGoals.