The Joker Is Getting Destroyed By Another Clown
A killer clown is positively terrifying moviegoers, but not the one that everyone was expecting. After the first movie earned over a billion dollars, we had every reason to expect that Joker: Folie À Deux would be another monstrous hit. But that sequel featuring Batman villain the Joker has been commercially and critically reviled; meanwhile, Terrifier 3 (featuring modern horror icon Art the Clown) is set to earn $17M-$18M in its opening weekend against a $5 million budget.
Terrifier 3 Beats Out Joker 2
In this particular case, the budgets of Joker 2 and Terrifier 3 help highlight why the success of Art the Clown’s latest movie is that much more impressive. For example, the doomed love story between Arthur Fleck and Harley Quinn earned $40 million in its opening weekend, but that’s not as impressive as it sounds considering that the movie had a budget of $200 million (a shocking amount compared to the first film’s $65 million budget). Now, the sequel is in freefall: in its second weekend, the Joker’s second cinematic outing is on track to earn $6.7M-$7M, representing a stunning 82 percent drop from the week before.
Worse Than The Flash
To put that in context, this is worse than the second-weekend drop for The Flash (73 percent) and Suicide Squad (72 percent). Simply put, this is the worst second drop for any DC character movie ever made, and this film’s failure looks much worse next to Terrifer 3. Art the Clown’s Christmas carnage caper is already on track to be very profitable at the box office, and it’s even pulling off a nearly impossible feat for such a gore-heavy slasher outing: impressing the critics.
Critics Hate Joker 2
The Joker’s onscreen dalliance with Harley Quinn failed to impress: on Rotten Tomatoes, it currently has a 33 percent critical rating. Meanwhile, Terrifier 3 has a critical rating of 78 percent, and it has managed to impress audiences just as much as critics. For example, this horror film has a CinemaScore of B, whereas the Todd Phillips sequel faltered: Joker: Folie À Deux earned a D CinemaScore, which is literally the lowest score that a comic adaptation has ever received.
Terrifier 3 Is Going To Be A Box Office Smash
Because each CinemaScore is calculated based on feedback from actual audiences, it can often be a faithful barometer for how successful a movie will be. For example, that D score for the Joker 2 helped serve as an early warning for just how bad the second week would be as those who saw the film warned everyone they knew about how bad it was. Conversely, some have speculated that Terrifier 3 getting a B CinemaScore out of the gate could be a positive omen that its box office will reach even greater heights than anyone could have guessed.
Send In The Clowns!
“Send in the clowns” seemed to be Hollywood’s command for this fall season, effectively giving us a cinematic showdown between two of the creepiest killer clowns to ever give us the shivers. It was fair to assume that the Batman villain would emerge victorious, but the failure of the Joker sequel is so complete that it will certainly be studied in film school as an example of what not to do.
Meanwhile, Terrifier 3 is showing young filmmakers how rewarding it can be to craft killer horror films on a shoestring budget and reap the success that comes from targeted marketing and positive word of mouth.
Art the Clown stays winning, y’all. And with this kind of success, we may ultimately see more Terrifier films than you can fit in a clown car.
Source: Deadline
