Joker 2 Already Looks Like Box Office Disappointment
The original Joker film ended up being a smash hit for Warner Bros., earning over a billion dollars worldwide. Because of this, many have assumed that Joker 2 will have a similarly outsized box office, but early reports about this film are enough to take the smile right off the studio’s face. Right now, the sequel is tracking to earn $70 million in its opening weekend, and because that is $10 million less than the first film, this may be an early omen of box office disappointment.
Film Festival Impressions Were Negative
It’s always possible that Joker 2 will end up with a box office to rival the first film if that opening weekend generates plenty of word-of-mouth buzz from fans. Should that happen, though, it will have to wow general audiences after it failed to win critics over. When the movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival, many prominent critics complained that the movie was uneven, unexciting, and underused Lady Gaga, arguably its greatest asset outside Joaquin Phoenix.
Superhero Fatigue In Full Force?
Another reason that Joker 2 may be headed for box office disappointment is the general superhero fatigue that has very notably affected the rival Marvel Cinematic Universe. After Captain Marvel similarly earned over a billion dollars for Disney, the follow-up film The Marvels earned only $206.1 million and lost the studio hundreds of millions of dollars after you account for marketing costs.
The primary reason generally given for the low box office is that audiences are sick of tuning into films made using the same old formula, and Joker 2 may yet win everyone over because it’s anything but formulaic.
Making It A Musical Could Be The Nail In The Coffin
For example, many fans have pointed out the film’s bizarre description on IMDb as a “crime drama musical thriller,” a potentially heady mixture of very different dramas. When giving a press conference in Venice, returning director Todd Philips said that he wanted the sequel to “feel audacious” and make it clear to audiences that “we were really swinging for the fences.” To this end, the Joker ends up falling in love with Harley Quinn, and the two express their mutual madness (the titular Folie à Deux) and growing emotions through musical numbers.
Only Time Will Tell
Certainly, the idea of making Joker 2 a musical co-starring Lady Gaga feels audacious, but the jury is still out on whether or not this will translate to a big box office for the film. Warner Bros. Discovery experienced plenty of financial disappointments when the DCEU crashed and burned, and the original Joker’s box office success was a relative rarity. And just as the first film existed firmly outside of the old cinematic universe, the sequel stands apart from James Gunn’s ambitious DCU.
Lands In Theaters This October
From the outside looking in, it seems like Philips accomplished his goal: even if Joker 2 ends up striking out at the box office, nobody can say the director and his lead actors aren’t swinging for the fences with this bonkers premise.
It’s the kind of creativity in comic book adaptations that we haven’t seen since Marvel made their own superhero film formula into everybody’s boring, go-to blueprint. And if you’d like to reward that creativity (and maybe help the film outperform expectations), go check out Joker: Folie à Deux when it hits theaters on October 4.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
