The opening for Warner Bros‘ Joker: Folie a Deux was even lower at $37.8M this weekend versus the $40M that the studio reported yesterday morning. Sunday came in at $6.2M, -45% off Saturday’s $11.3M. The movie cost $190M+ before P&A.
Overseas was better as we told you yesterday with a $81.1M take, however, just like domestic, prospects aren’t bright. More on what went wrong with this film under the David Zaslav led Warner Bros. Discovery conglom here. As we told you, the studio gave filmmaker Todd Phillips to make the movie he wanted, but at a much higher greenlight price of $190M+, a that’s 171% above the original 2019 movie’s $70M, which had two co-financiers, Village Roadshow and the then Bron. Joker 2 only had one co-fi partner, Domain at 25%.
As one wise industry colleague pointed out to me last night, whenever low CinemaScores register like this it’s because the audience was sold a bill of goods that wasn’t delivered upon by the studio. Ya know that poster of Joker and Harley dancing on the stairs? It’s not in the movie. As is de rigueur in movie marketing, studios don’t blatantly sell musicals as musicals or else no one will show up. They have to hide that in their movie marketing and trick audiences in the door. It’s then that they easily become a fan — or not, which was the case here. Some critics argue that Joker 2 isn’t a musical — but it has songs and singing and dancing, and that’s what pissed off a 9PM Century City AMC attendees on Saturday who were shouting at the screen. We also understand that the lower 40% of theaters for Joker 2 only generated 5% of the gross.
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Despite any great intent in filmmaking here by Phillips, this is not the sequel that general audiences wanted to see.
Saturday’s gross went off a cliff next to Friday + previews’ $20.3M. This is all after bad word of mouth with a D Cinemascore, 1/2 star on Comscore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak and a Rotten Tomatoes audience score, which is even lower than the critics’, 31% to 33%.
Joker 2 in its final domestic will be greatly lower than the opening of the original movie, which continues to stand as an October domestic record with $96.2M.
What about weekend 2? Does Joker 2 win? Possibly –even if it falls off a cliff with $9M-$10M. The Marvels, which was Marvel Studios’ lowest opening ever last November at $46.1M fell through the floor with a -78% drop in weekend 2 with $10.1M and that was off a ‘B’ CinemaScore. This weekend Joker 2 faces Sony’s wide expansion of Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, Iconic Events’ Terrifier 3 which could do $9M, and Focus Features’ Piece by Piece which could do $4M.