For Todd Phillips’s Joker, box office projections have been developing for months—if not years. Not only did Joker make over $1 billion globally, but it also became a phenomenon when it came out in 2019, ranking top among all R-rated movies ever and landing lead Joaquin Phoenix an Academy Award. Particularly with Lady Gaga in a major supporting role, moviegoers all around expected that its sequel would generate as much attention and excitement; but, that did not turn out.
Joker: Folie À Deux is fast spiraling into a disaster instead. Critics and viewers both have been treating the very costly follow-up film poorly, and its opening weekend box office attendance has been disappointing. View the complete Top 10 below and come along for analysis afterwards.
| TITLE | WEEKEND GROSS | DOMESTIC GROSS | LW | THTRS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Joker: Folie À Deux* | $40,000,000 | $40,000,000 | N/A | 4,102 |
| 2. The Wild Robot | $18,700,000 | $63,984,000 | 1 | 3,997 |
| 3. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice | $10,325,000 | $265,506,148 | 2 | 3,576 |
| 4. Transformers One | $5,350,000 | $47,221,000 | 3 | 3,106 |
| 5. Speak No Evil | $2,800,000 | $32,586,000 | 5 | 2,279 |
| 6. White Bird: A Wonder Story* | $1,530,000 | $1,530,000 | N/A | 1,018 |
| 7. Deadpool & Wolverine | $1,526,000 | $633,839,345 | 7 | 1,605 |
| 8. The Substance | $1,346,938 | $9,732,272 | 11 | 686 |
| 9. Megalopolis | $1,050,000 | $6,489,266 | 6 | 1,854 |
| 10. My Old Ass | $908,376 | $4,513,848 | 9 | 1,205 |
Joker: Folie À Deux’ Mild Opening Weekend Surprises
As said, Joker was a huge smash when it came out in late 2019 and not a movie that had to gradually build an audience. Though with a handicap of R-rating, the movie promised to be a fresh and unique kind of cinematic experience for comic book aficionados, and tons of buzz helped it to make $96.2 million domestically in its first three days of release. Joker: Folie À Deux was supposed to show comparable statistics in the run-up to its theatrical premiere, but that didn’t happen. It hardly came near at all.
Early numbers published by The Numbers show that Joker: Folie À Deux is making less than half of what the 2019 film earned in during its debut weekend. Though it’s the fifteenth highest debut of the year, slightly below the $42 million earned by Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus in August, making $40 million over an opening weekend in 2024 isn’t by itself a total failure. Comparatively, based on what prognosticators predicted, it’s a somewhat poor start.
If Joker: Folie À Deux was produced with a budget comparable to its predecessor, it wouldn’t be a problem; instead, the studio and the directors were somewhat arrogant with the follow-up movie. A Variety article back in February said that Joker was made for a meager $60 million, but with reported production expenses in the $200 million level, the musical follow-up cost over four times as much. If opening weekend ticket sales stayed constant, the sequel would be in a strong financial shape; but, they did not, and it seems now that the Joaquin Phoenix/Lady Gaga film will be remembered as one of the box office debacles of 2024.
Apart from its initial performance, Joker: Folie À Deux seems to have a difficult word of mouth issue ahead of it as well. Following the movie’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival (you can read my 2.5 star Joker: Folie À Deux CinemaBlend review posted last month), criticisms first began to surface online. While there wasn’t much love for the release right off the bat, things have gotten much worse for the title following its theatrical arrival. Apart from almost equal Rotten Tomatoes’ ratings, the title has received a “D” from polls conducted by CinemaScore, the former movie despite its grimness obtained a “B+”.
Although the movie is not doing well locally, international markets provide a bright side. Joker: Folie à Deux has thus far generated $81 million from outside the United States and Canada, therefore bringing its global total to $121 million. Having said that, ticket sales are projected to drop in the next weeks; moreover, the amount indicated for the sequel excludes marketing and publicity expenses.
It would be interesting to see how this will finally influence the macro-scale box office performance for the remaining part of October. Although there was industry expectation that Joker 2 would be a dominant title all month, the likelihood of it returning at number one in the box office Top 10 seemed remote. That might present chances for the major movies scheduled for theater in the next weeks—including Kelly Marcel’s Venom: The Last Dance and Parker Finn’s Smile 2—but it also might end up deflating the market.
Unquestionably, the ticket sales over next weekend will be fascinating.
Wild Robot Falls Softly Amid Awesome Buzz
For everyone hoping for the health of the business, Joker: Folie À Deux’s poor performance is unfortunate; yet, one encouraging development from this weekend’s box office attendance is Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot’s performance. Though DreamWorks Animation’s new DreamWorks Animation release lacked what could be considered a blockbuster debut when it arrived in theaters at the end of September, one thing the film has going for it is almost everyone who sees it falls in love with it (I, for one, gave The Wild Robot 4.5 stars in my CinemaBlend review). Last Sunday, the film opens at number one. Critics and viewers have really loved the film, and that optimism produced what might be a great second Friday-to- Sunday.
Following its strong start, Bumped down to second place due to the arrival of Joker: Folie À Deux, The Wild Robot gained $18.7 million domestically to its coffers in the subsequent three days, a mild 48 percent weekend-to- week decline. The animated feature with Lupita Nyong’o’s and Pedro Pascal’s voices has grossed $64 million in the United States and Canada thus far; when combined with the ticket sales overseas ($35.5 million), the title has earned over $100 million worldwide. Though not a sequel, those numbers aren’t precisely like Mike Mitchell’s Kung Fu Panda 4 or Kelsey Mann’s Inside Out 2 from previous year. Still, they have the benefit of a huge built-in audience.
Looking ahead to next week, the present slate of titles will have some intriguing new movies to contend with: Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, Morgan Neville’s Pharrell Williams biopic Piece By Piece, Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice starring Sebastian Stan, and Damien Leone’s vomit-inducing slasher Terrifier 3. Visit our 2024 Movie Release Calendar to find all of the films planned to hit theaters and streaming in the next weeks/months of the year; return back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to review the weekend box office figures.