After a press campaign that felt much longer than the one-month it’s been since it premiered in Venice, Joker: Folie à Deux finally came out over the weekend. And it broke records!! Just, not in the direction anyone associated with the film was aiming for. The sequel is now the first comic book movie to nab a D from CinemaScore (2019’s Joker scored a B+), and it also netted 33% from Rotten Tomatoes (compared to Joker’s 68%). But those are only the opinions of people who saw the movie, which was a much smaller contingency than projected/expected/prayed for. Less than a month ago the studio boasted it would earn $70 million domestically in its opening weekend. The actual number will be around $40 million or less. It did better internationally, raking in $81.1 million, but even when you add that to the domestic tally, the figures are well below its $190 million budget. The Hollywood Reporter did a breakdown on the low numbers for Folie à Todd:
Todd Phillips’ sequel Joker: Folie à Deux bombed in its box office debut with an estimated domestic opening of $40 million, well behind expectations after becoming the first Hollywood comic book movie in history to earn a D CinemaScore from audiences. Exit polls are equally as grim as audiences express their unhappiness with the antihero-musical mashup, which did less than half of the business the first Joker did in its launch despite costing more than three times as much to make, or $190 million.
The Joaquin Phoenix-Lady Gaga pic was expected to open to at least $50 million to $60 million, but projections were continually downgraded throughout the weekend as traffic stalled. Even on Saturday, most rival studios showed it opening to at least $45 million to $47 million. And don’t forget that when the Warner Bros. movie first came on tracking three weeks ago, it was pacing to earn $70 million.
Overseas, Joker 2 opened to $81.1 million, in line with expectations for a global debt of $121.1 million. While the overseas result provided some relief, it’s still notably behind the first Joker. The sequel opened everywhere save for Japan and China, where it launches in the coming weeks.
The culprit behind the unfortunate turn-of-events: terrible word of mouth. Hence, rival studios believe the final domestic number could actually be in the $37 million to $39 million range when final grosses are reported Monday. Warner Bros. insiders say there is no way to sugarcoat the results and that the studio is stunned and sorely disappointed. At the same time, they believe Phillips is a creative genius and worthy of gambling on.
In 2019, Phillips’ Joker debuted to a dreamy $96.2 million in North America on its way to a record-shattering worldwide total of $1 billion against a $55 million budget. It remained the top-grossing R-rated film of all time domestically and globally until Deadpool & Wolverine came along. Joker earned relatively good reviews, while audiences gave it a B+ CinemaScore. Its critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes is a fresh 68 percent, compared to a rotten 33 percent for Folie à Deux.
Phillips’ polarizing, R-rated sequel — which made its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival — is a genre-busting, music-infused film that strays outside of the comfort zone of the typical fanboy-fueled comic book pic. Just as worrisome as the D CinemaScore are terrible exit scores on PostTrak, with audiences giving it a half-star out of five, similar to the early scores for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, which bombed in spectacular fashion last weekend with $4 million after earning a D+ CinemaScore.
You see, all is not lost — Folie à Deux out-performed Megaflopolis! And not only that, but Francis Ford Coppola lavished praise on Todd Phillips over the weekend, writing on his Instagram that Phillips is always “one step ahead of the audience never doing what they expect. Congratulations to Joker: Folie à Deux.” I guess in this case, Phillip’s “one step ahead” meant an actual step into the theater. Most of the reviews have been good for the performances and art direction, it’s the story that’s the problem. Or lack thereof. Also, I think they shot themselves in the foot with the marketing being so afraid to call it a musical. I mean, sure, I can understand the returning filmmakers worrying that saying the word “musical” would scare off the bros. But I thought at least Lady Gaga would embrace the genre! Instead she toed the line, giving this inexplicable explanation: “The way that music is used is to really give the characters a way to express what they mean to say because the scene and just the dialogue is not enough.” My Lady, you just very eloquently defined the essence of a musical. Anyway, now that Folie à Deux has conclusively underperformed, can we press Joaquin Phoenix on why he bolted the Todd Haynes movie at the last minute?
Photos credit: Jeffrey Mayer / Avalon and via Instagram
Personally, I love that shade of red hair on Gaga. I wish she had visible eyebrows, though.
And yes, now that we’ve ascertained that superhero/ villain sequels aren’t speaking to audiences as much as they once did, and the fan boys are NOT into musicals, let’s get JP on the record as to why he tanked the R-rated gay Todd Haynes movie at the last minute putting so many people in economic distress!
If this was lead by a woman and a woman director, there would be 50 sexist articles about female led comic book movies and questioning the ability of the female director.
Eh, people are still claiming it bombed because it’s woke. Not sure how it’s woke because I haven’t seen it either.
The whole thing has people tied up in knots trying to argue about it, lol, I’m seeing some comments decrying the first one for now being about an oversensitive snowflake etc.
One thing for certain is that this is disastrous for Phillips and Phoenix. Gaga will be fine.
I don’t understand this sequel because the first was aimed at angry Trump voting incels and this one is aimed at gays and women. Wtaf.
@Lisa I haven’t seen either movie LOL but I saw one review on TikTok (I dont mind spoilers when I know I’m not going to watch something so I’ll watch reviews etc) that basically said it seemed like the director and Phoenix were ticked that the first movie was embraced by the incels so this movie seemed to try to actively reject them.
but like I said I haven’t seen either. (and this reviewer did not like the movie lol.)
Lisa, yeah. But as funny as incels crying is, from a business perspective it was a strange decision to alienate your core audience, even if this isn’t the audience you were hoping for.
I mean I saw the first film and I thought that pandering to incels was deliberate. How do you do that by accident?
@nanny I think they were going for a 70s angry, alienated vibe Ala Taxi Driver. They even had Deniro. And then intel’s adopted it because they’re the only men allowed those feelings. At least in their heads.
So true.
I think people finally get sick of the Joker.
Hopefully they come up with other characters that can have actoren show their range.
Without spoiling anything (in case someone still wants to see it) I wouldn’t consider these two films actual Joker movies considering how this second one ends.
Apparently Phoenix and Gaga improvised a lot. The concept of the musical came to Phoenix in a dream so he said.
I do feel this was in part Todd Philips reaction to the incels so embracing this movie. So he makes a misleading trailer. And hits them with a Joker musical. Of course the white fan boys are going to hate it. And I just read movie spoilers so that ending must have had them besides themselves incandescent with rage.
It’s not just the white fan boys that hated it. I know someone who saw it in LA, and I follow someone on Instagram who saw it in Singapore, both are musical theater nerds. They both did not like the movie and felt it seemed like it was half-assed with no plot yet visually beautiful. My friend still feels it could have done better at the box office if they leaned into the musical theater aspect of the movie and tapped into that audience.
I saw it and felt the same way. I usually like musicals and this one felt like a musical that didn’t want to actually be a musical. They didn’t lean into the musical numbers at all, none of the songs or choreography were memorable. I get the idea but they needed to go all in on that if they wanted it to be successful IMO. Also the plot was just boring overall. Great acting though.
I was talking about that movie with my brother-in-law this weekend and he didn’t know that the first one had been so incel-orientated and I was like ?? Also most musicals people seem to say that they can’t be the targeted audience for that movie because the songs are actually quite bad lol.
I’m kind of curious to see if the studio will still push for an Oscars campaign.
He deserves it, she doesn’t.
I have never seen a movie that purposely goes after the white men that loved it. And that’s all I am going to say about that.
Meanwhile, Netflix dropped Platform 2 this weekend. It’s not the masterpiece of the original, but it doesn’t involve sticky movie theater seats either. Stay home my friends!
OMG! Platform 2 was utter rubbish! Hubby and I were so pissed that we vowed never to mention it again. The 1st one was really good, though.
I agree, it was a typical unnecessary sequel failing to reproduce the glory of the original, but at least I watched it on my couch snuggling with my dogs and it cost me nothing.
Platform 2 was one of the worst movies ever.
Feel for Gaga. Do not care about the director or Phoenix…
Anybody here follow Heather Cox Richardson? She is a “politcal historian who uses facts and history to put politics into context.” She wrote a post that indicated Hollywood has drastically cut back on producing cheap tacky reality shows because the allure of such programing has been diminished because of the rise of the mango menace. The public is also tiring of this violent incel appealing content. Joaquin’s flaky behavior (and refusal to really promote the movie like other movie stars) also did not help the bottom line. Are the magat incels blaming (unfairly) Lady Gaga for the failure? Probably. But. People are tiring of the magas and the creepy, slick content they favor. I live in an overwhelmingly red area. Even now I am not seeing a lot of the tRump merchandise and I am seeing more Democratic merchandise than previous elections. Society may be finally flipping back.
Love this take and pray it’s true.
@TN Democrat Yes I’m a long time subscriber to her newsletter, I love her podcast too and the way she frames current moments within a historical context. She’s more optimistic than I am right now. I still feel like we’re in an era of regression.
I really had no idea it was a musical. Blech! I’m so glad it bombed for various reasons lol.
This movie is not good. It doesn’t matter who it’s aimed at,, the story just isn’t interesting.
I went to see this movie, and I can say that I am terribly disappointed! It is not what I expected!
I enjoyed the first one. I love when the director does something different with this kind of movies. Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies were my favorite for this reason. I enjoyed the first movie, it came out around the same time there was an increasing discontent among people about wealth inequality and how impossible it seemed to survive financially. It was a right movie at the right time with its dark atmosphere. I was looking forward to this since I am also fan of musicals. However, it seems like I am gonna skip this one and not see on the big screen. One of the negative reviews was about SA to Joker. I honestly don’t need to see that.
Not sure which site posted the review you referenced but there is no SA experienced by Joker.
I think there’s the one scene that people are saying was an SA.
@Aerie, are you sure? I have read multiple user comments from reddit movies subreddit. They referred to a scene where Joker gets SA’s by hospital personnel? It was multiple comments and no one corrected it. I didn’t deep dive too much into the comments in order not to read so many spoilers though.
The exact numbers just came in, and it made $37,800,000 for a total of $118,900,000 worldwide. This is the most it’s going to make at one time but needs $400 million to break even. I’m still perplexed as to why it had a budget of $190/$200 million when the first Joker budget was $55 million.