The joke may finally be on the Joker. Joker: Folie à Deux, Todd Phillips’s highly anticipated musical follow-up to his Oscar-winning Joker film, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, did not sing at the box office in its opening weekend, earning a lackluster $40 million domestically.
Per Variety, Joker: Folie à Deux was initially projected to make $50 million to $65 million, with some prerelease projections having estimated the sequel would earn as much as $70 million domestically in its opening weekend. Joker: Folie à Deux reportedly cost $200 million to make, with Phoenix, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of comedian turned anarchist Arthur Fleck in the original film, reportedly taking home $20 million for the sequel and Gaga, an international pop star and Oscar winner in her own right, making about $12 million. Sources with knowledge of the film’s financials told Variety that Folie à Deux will need to generate at least $450 million at the box office in order for the production to break even.
Making that much money might be easier said than done, as a mix of negative reviews and venomous word of mouth contributed to a disappointing opening weekend. Joker: Folie à Deux currently holds a 33% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoesand it doesn’t seem to be faring any better with audiences. The sequel currently holds a 31% audience score on that same website. Both the critical and commercial consensuses pale in comparison to those around Phillips’s Joker (2019), which boasts a 68% critical score and an 89% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Joker was made for a comparatively scant $65 million and blew away expectations, earning $96.2 million over its opening weekend five years ago and going on to make more than $1 billion at the international box office. It also earned the distinction of becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time (though Deadpool & Wolverine took over that title this summer).
That’s not to say the Joker sequel doesn’t have its fans. Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola has praised Phillips and his film: “Ever since the wonderful ‘The Hangover’ he’s always one step ahead of the audience never doing what they expect. Congratulations to Joker: Folie à Deux,” he wrote on Instagram. Coppola’s passion project, Megalopolis, is currently flopping at the box office as well. It also received a D+ CinemaScore, narrowly edging out Joker: Folie à Deux, which holds a D—the lowest score a Hollywood comic book movie has ever received.
Some fans are drawing a parallel between Joker: Folie à Deux’s box performance and Nia DaCosta‘s The Marvels—a film which, while considered a flop, out-performed Folie à Deux at the box office when it made $47 million over its opening weekend in November of 2023. That amount is nonetheless the lowest of all time for a Marvel film. “The way the media is babying Todd Phillips and avoiding to frame the Joker numbers in a negative light but was so quick to create a smear campaign about Nia DaCosta even BEFORE The Marvels came out,” posted X user @OLSENSCTRL. “It’s almost like double standards are real who would’ve thought!”
Time will tell if Joker: Folie à Deux will wind up officially being considered a flop or not. In the meantime, some are speculating as to what Phoenix and Gaga feel about the film, analyzing the stars’ body language during their press junket interviews and even going so far as to attempt to read their lips. In any case, for all its faults Joker: Folie à Deux gave the world Gaga’s Harlequin album—so even if it winds up being a critical and commercial disaster, it wasn’t all for naught.
