Oh dear; 2019’s Joker was a box office hit, raking in $1 billion at the box office, but Folie a Deux has failed to beat even Morbius in its domestic opening weekend.
You know, I never quite understood how Todd Phillips’ Joker did so well at the box office, even as popular as the character is. Like, a billion dollars? Seriously? The guy that made The Hangover made a movie that successful? So of course when a sequel was announced there were some pretty big expectations, and after its first weekend, it is incredibly safe to say that those expectations have not been met in the slightest. Joker: Folie a Deux finally released last Friday, October 4, almost six whole years after the original film, and its opening weekend in the US brought in… $37 million. For context, the first film opened with $39 million on the Friday alone.
That’s bad enough, but what’s even worse is the fact that this is somehow a worse domestic opening weekend than Morbius, Sony’s absolute flop of a Not-Quite-Spider-Man film from 2022. Obviously that’ll be quite crushing for all the leads on Joker: Folie a Deux, but what can you do? It’s not 100% clear why the film is doing so badly, but I can only imagine it’s a combination of early bad reviews, and a lack of curiosity at what a solo Joker film might look like that definitely helped out the first one. Plus, other than executives who saw dollar signs, who even asked for a second one?
It’s believed that Joker: Folie a Deux cost somewhere in the region of $200 million, a massive increase from the first film’s $65 million, which is obviously bad news for Warner Bros. The sequel also earned itself a D CinemaScore, the lowest ever grade for a comic book movie from the firm, beating out 2015’s abysmal Fantastic Four, which had a C-. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we see this one on Max.
