Joker: Folie a Deux shows "how many boners The Joker can make" in dismal box office opening

Boy, I bet Joaquin Phoenix wishes he had a Todd Haynes directorial effort in his back pocket for next year after this weekend, huh?

It honestly didn't seem outlandish once upon a time that Joker: Folie a Deux might surpass its predecessor’s record-shattering $97 million domestic bow. However, what was novel in 2019 earned the cold shoulder from audiences in 2024. This Joker sequel (which cost $190-200 million) came in drastically beneath even the tempered $50-60 million opening weekend pre-release projections. Instead, Joker: Folie a Deux opened to just $40 million in North America. That’s just $1 million higher than the domestic bow of Morbius. It's also only $6 million better than Birds of Prey, which cost less than half as much to produce. Don't forget that it had a worse opening weekend than Batman & Robin!

Thanks to its $20.6 million opening day, this strange rip-off of The People's Joker grossed 51.5% of its opening weekend from its opening day alone. That makes it the 33rd most frontloaded wide-release opening weekend in history. Exempting foreign-language titles and movies opening the weekend before Christmas, Folie a Deux was the 24th most frontloaded wide release debut ever. Remove $7 million from Thursday night previews from its opening day haul, Folie a Deux dropped a deeply worrying 12% from Friday to Saturday. Audience word of mouth is simply toxic here. Finally, Folie a Deux made only a couple hundred thousand dollars more in its domestic opening weekend than Joker's opening DAY. The bad news just never ends here.

Joker: Folie a Deux would always struggle to capture the lightning-in-a-bottle response its predecessor got. However, adding Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn (forgive me, LEE, I forgot, they only call her Lee) seemed like a foolproof way to stave off some box office bleeding. Still, initial dire reviews already diluted buzz for the title. Then the Warner Bros. marketing campaign failed to make Folie a Deux look significantly different than its predecessor. There was also the “little” problem of this Joker follow-up's audience responses. This sequel scored the worst CinemaScore grade ever (a D) for a comic book adaptation. Word-of-mouth on this project was toxic and caused it to sink like a stone.

Regardless of what one thinks of it personally (I’m mixed on the movie myself), 2019’s Joker did offer audiences something different from normal comic book adaptations. In a year of three expansive PG-13 Marvel Studios titles, Joker’s R-rated smaller scope offered moviegoers a conceptually unique (albeit obviously one informed by Martin Scorsese) perspective on this subgenre. That made it stand out in the marketplace. Warner Bros. brass should’ve used that success as a launchpad to ask talented filmmakers (Dee Rees, Karyn Kusama, The Daniels, etc.) to come up with original skirting ideas. Joker proved unexpected hits could come from anywhere. Build on that. Instead, the David Zaslav Warner Bros. regime announced a Joker sequel as one of its first big projects. You can’t make an unexpected transgressive hit strike twice. The element of surprise is gone!

In retrospect, this was a foolhardy exercise, an encapsulation of Hollywood learning all the wrong lessons from box office hits. Audiences are reportedly becoming incensed in theaters everywhere, over realizing that Joker: Folie a Deux is a musical. Those accounts also hammers home that we need to stop marketing musicals as non-musicals. Finally, Folie a Deux continues a frustrating year for Warner Bros. Exempting two hits that originated from Legendary Pictures (Dune: Part Two and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire), WB's only 2024 hit is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. With no major titles on the dock for the rest of 2024, the studio will struggle to clear $1.2 billion domestically for the year. Exempting the 2020-2022 period, that would make 2024 the lowest-grossing Warner Bros. year domestically since 2006.

I’m just a bimbo from Texas who isn’t good at math. However, it seems doubtful recently shelved/discarded Warner Bros. movies costing under $100 million like Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme would’ve been less financially or critically disastrous for the studio than having the Warner Bros. logo attached to The Flash, Horizon: An American Saga- Part One, and now Joker: Folie a Deux. Hey, at least the Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme creative teams, not to mention Todd Haynes, can get a good laugh at this weekend’s box office schadenfreude.

While Joker: Folie a Deux became one of 2024’s biggest box office bombs, The Wild Robot grossed another $18.7 million, a 48% decline from its debut. That's a slightly larger second-weekend decline than fellow late September animated family movies like Abominable, Smallfoot, and the first two Hotel Transylvania titles. Still, this one's off to a terrific ten-day domestic gross of $63.98 million. Don’t be shocked if it returns to the top spot at the domestic box office next weekend.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice continued to perform nicely with its second consecutive weekend-to-weekend drop of under 40%. This time around, it eased just 36% to gross another $10.3 million. With $265.5 million to date, this smash hit should end its domestic run just under or over $290 million. Transformers One stabilized a bit this weekend, but it was too little too late. Easing 42%, Transformers One grossed another $5.35 million for a measly $47.2 million 17-day domestic total. This one's going to end its North American run way too close to The Lego Ninjago Movie's final haul for comfort.

Speak No Evil continued its unexpectedly leggy run with another $2.8 million, a mere 34% decline from last weekend. This title has now grossed $32.5 million domestically. That's still an underwhelming total for a Blumhouse movie. However, at least its final domestic total (which will likely be in the $37-39 million neighborhood) won't be far off from the North American hauls of pre-COVID Blumhouse movies like Truth or Dare or Ma. Sam and Colby: The Legends of Paranormal is a motion picture starring a pair of YouTubers confined to just Cinemark movie theaters. I’d never heard of it before a few days ago, but clearly, some people were very stoked to see it on the big screen. The title grossed a reported $1.77 million at just 302 locations. Once again, making theatrical films aimed at younger audiences and their interests. Who knew? A new R-rated comic book movie couldn't stop Deadpool & Wolverine's total box office momentum. It dropped 44% to gross another $1.55 million for a $633.8 million lifetime gross.

Nearly four years after it started shooting, White Bird: A Wonder Story finally hit theaters. Lionsgate clearly just dumped this spin-off with no fanfare. Just look at its non-existent marketing campaign and the studio opening it in just 1,018 theaters. No wonder (no pun intended) it debuted at just $1.53 million. Is this one of the biggest drop-offs in terms of domestic opening weekends ever between installments in a franchise? It might be, considering the original Wonder opened to $27.5 million. Creating such a strained extension of the Wonder universe was always a bizarre idea. However, Lionsgate waited far too long to cash in on the original movie’s success. The studio was similarly bizarrely tardy in getting this feature out in anything resembling a reasonable timeframe compared to when it started filming. An all-around bamboozling production that opened to a whimper at the box office.

Meanwhile, The Substance continued its impressive box office run. This weekend it dipped just 28% (despite losing 1,026 theaters) to gross another $1.34 million. It's now grossed just a hair over $9.7 million domestically and will hit $10 million sometime today. This one's clearly got some juice in the tank and could end its domestic run in the $13-14 million range. With distributor Mubi about to score its first $10+ million domestic grosser now’s as good a time as any to suggest (over a weekend where Joker 2 and Wonder 2 flopped) that, hey, original ideas, invest in them Hollywood. Ten years from now, do you think people will want The Substance or Joker: Folie a Deux merch?

Megalopolis couldn't recover from its disastrous opening weekend this frame and fell 74% for a $1.05 million second frame and a $6.48 million ten-day total. Just outside the top ten, My Old Ass fell 58%, a surprisingly high decline for an indie comedy. It grossed another $908,376 for a domestic total of $4.51 million.

The new wide-release Monster Summer absolutely cratered. Never heard of this cheapo family horror movie? It stars Mel Gibson and only grossed $614,000 from 1,193 locations for roughly $515 per theater. A dismal bow for this title, certainly this will send shivers down the spines of Monster Summer’s financiers. Another week, another Sony Pictures Classics bomb. This time, The Outrun opened to in 508 theaters and grossed $334,249 for a $657 per theater average. How many times does Sony Classics have to fail with this release strategy of launching arthouse titles in 500+ theaters immediately before they switch their ways? Saturday Night expanded to 21 theaters this weekend. It grossed a robust $280,000 at 21 locations for a $13,333 per theater average. With a $638,000 ten-day total, Saturday Night is faring nicely. However, how will it play when it starts playing outside of New York and Los Angeles this coming weekend? We shall know soon.

A Different Man expanded to 265 theaters and grossed just $186,401 for a $703 per theater average. Grossing $373,251 after 17 days of domestic release, this terrific dark comedy will struggle to hit $1 million domestically. GKIDS dropped Look Back in two locations this weekend. This Kiyotaka Oshiyama directorial effort grossed $72,724 for a $36,362 per theater average. Leap of Faith opened in seven theaters and grossed $31,530 (for a $4,504 per theater average), while fellow newcomer Daaaaali! grossed $3,200, also in seven theaters, for a $457 per theater average. Separated opened in a single theater and grossed $8,766.

The top ten movies this weekend grossed a measly $82 million, behind countless past domestic October weekends. Heck, this frame came in behind the first weekend of October 2010. That's when the infinitely cheaper The Social Network opened to $22.4 million. This frame's haul was also noticeably behind the sum accumulated over October 6-8, 2017. That was another weekend led by an underperforming R-rated Warner Bros. sequel (Blade Runner 2049).

All other major new wide releases got out of the way of Joker: Folie a Deux. Rival studios resumed it’d be another box office titan. Considering early October 2018 smash hit Venom opened to $85 million yet still left enough room in the marketplace for A Star is Born to debut at $45 million, this scheduling move was always lunacy. Now movie theaters are paying dearly for all major studios placing their chips in the Joker: Folie a Deux bag. Sure, this weekend was above last year's first weekend of October, when The Exorcist: Believer underperformed. However, improving on that dire frame by 33% isn't some grand accomplishment.

After six days, October 2024 has only grossed $105 million, a less-than-stellar start for the month. Two of the last three Octobers cracked $500+ million domestically. That sum that could be hard to reach for October 2024 if Venom: The Last Dance underperforms. This is what happens when you place all your bets on a handful of comic book blockbusters, it's so frustrating. For the sake of movie theater owners and employees, let’s hope the rest of the month’s new releases fare better than this weekend’s box office boondoggle that is Joker: Folie a Deux.