AP: Joker: Folie à Deux is the No. 1 movie at the box office, but it might not be destined for a happy ending. In a turn of events that only Arthur Fleck would find funny, the follow-up to Todd Phillips’ 2019 origin story about the Batman villain opened in theatres nationwide on the weekend to a muted $40 million, according to studio estimates Sunday, less than half that of its predecessor.
The collapse was swift and has many in the industry wondering: How did the highly anticipated sequel to an Oscar-winning, billion-dollar film with the same creative team go wrong? Just three weeks ago, tracking services pegged the movie for a $70-million début, which would still have been down a fair amount from Joker’s record-breaking $96.2 million launch in October 2019. Reviews were mixed out of the Venice Film Festival, where it premièred in competition like the first movie and even got a 12-minute standing ovation.
But the homecoming glow was short-lived, and the fragile foundation would crumble in the coming weeks with its Rotten Tomatoes score dropping from 63 per cent at Venice to 33 per cent by its first weekend in theatres. Perhaps even more surprising were the audience reviews: Ticket buyers polled on opening night gave the film a deadly D CinemaScore. Exit polls from PostTrak weren’t any better.
It got a meagre half star out of five possible. Joker: Folie à Deux cost at least twice as much as the first film to produce, though reported figures vary at exactly how p.
