‘Joker 2’ Stumbles at Box Office amid Poor Reviews from Audiences, Critics

“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 theaters nationwide this 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 debut, which would still have been down a fair amount from “Joker’s” record-breaking $96.2 million launch in Oct. 2019. Reviews were mixed out of the Venice Film Festival, where it premiered in competition like the first movie and even got a 12-minute standing ovation, The Associated Press reported.
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% at Venice to 33% by its first weekend in theaters. 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 meager half star out of five possible.
"That’s a double whammy that’s very difficult to recover from," said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “The biggest issue of all is the reported budget. A $40 or $50 million opening for a less expensive movie would be a solid debut."
“Joker: Folie à Deux” cost at least twice as much as the first film to produce, though reported figures vary at exactly how pricey it was to make. Phillips told Variety that it was less than the reported $200 million; Others have it pegged at $190 million. Warner Bros. released the film in 4,102 locations in North America. About 12.5% of its domestic total came from 415 IMAX screens.
Internationally, it's earned $81.1 million from 25,788 screens, bringing its total global earnings estimate to $121.1 million. In the next two weeks, “Joker 2” will also open in Japan and China.
Second place went to Universal and DreamWorks Animation's “The Wild Robot,” which added $18.7 million in its second weekend, bringing its domestic total to nearly $64 million. Globally, it's made over $100 million. Warner Bros.' “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" took third place in weekend five, Paramount's “Transformers One” landed in fourth and Universal and Blumhouse's “Speak No Evil” rounded out the top five.
The other big new release of the weekend, Lionsgate's “White Bird,” flopped with just $1.5 million from just over 1,000 locations, despite an A+ CinemaScore.
Overall, the weekend is up from the same frame last year, but “Joker's” start is an unwelcome twist for theater owners hoping to narrow the box office deficit.
Phillips and star Joaquin Phoenix have said they aspired to make something as “audacious” as the first film. The sequel added Lady Gaga into the fold, as a Joker superfan, and delved further into the mind of Arthur Fleck, imprisoned at Arkham and awaiting trial for the murders he committed in the first. It’s also a musical, with elaborately imagined song and dance numbers to old standards. Gaga even released a companion album called “'Harlequin,” alongside the film.
In his review for The Associated Press, Jake Coyle wrote that “Phillips has followed his very antihero take on the Joker with a very anti-sequel. It combines prison drama, courthouse thriller and musical, and yet turns out remarkably inert given how combustible the original was.”
The sequel has already been the subject of many think pieces, some who posit that the sequel was deliberately alienating fans of the first movie. In cruder terms, it’s been called a “middle finger.” But fans often ignore the advice of critics, especially when it comes to opening their wallets to see revered comic book characters on the big screen.
“They took a swing for the fences,” Dergarabedian said. “But except for a couple of outliers, audiences in 2024 seem to want to know what they’re getting when they’re going to the theater. They want the tried and true, the familiar.”
It has some high-profile defenders too: Francis Ford Coppola, who last week got his own D+ CinemaScore for his pricey, ambitious and divisive film “Megalopolis,” entered the Joker chat with an Instagram post.
“@ToddPhillips films always amaze me and I enjoy them thoroughly,” Coppola wrote. “Ever since the wonderful ‘The Hangover’ he’s always one step ahead of the audience never doing what they expect.”
“Megalopolis,” meanwhile, dropped a terminal 74% in its second weekend with just over $1 million, bringing its total just shy of $6.5 million against a $120 million budget.
Deadline editor Anthony D’Alessandro thinks the problem started with the idea to make the Joker sequel a musical. “No fan of the original movie wanted to see a musical sequel,” he wrote on Saturday.
The first film was also divisive and the subject of much discourse, then about whether it might send the wrong message to the wrong type of person. And yet people still flocked to see what the fuss was about. “Joker” went on to pick up 11 Oscar nominations, including best picture and best director, and three wins. It also made over $1 billion and was the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time, until this summer when Marvel's “Deadpool & Wolverine" took the crown.

Wearing an oversized bucket hat, silver chains and a black Miu Miu shirt, 82-year-old Park Jeom-sun gesticulates, her voice rising and falling with staccato lines about growing chili peppers, cucumbers and eggplants.
Park, nicknamed Suni, was flanked by seven longtime friends who repeated her moves and her lines. Together, they're Suni and the Seven Princesses, South Korea 's latest octogenarian sensation. With an average age of 85, they're probably the oldest rap group in the country, The Associated Press said.
Born at a time when women were often marginalized in education, Park and her friends were among a group of older adults learning how to read and write the Korean alphabet, hangeul, at a community center in their farming village in South Korea’s rural southeast.
They were having so much fun that they started dabbling with poetry. They began writing and performing rap in summer last year.
Suni and the Seven Princesses enjoy nationwide fame, appearing in commercials and going viral on social media. South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo sent them a congratulatory message last month on their first anniversary, praising their passion for learning.
At a road near their community center in Chilgok on Thursday, Park and her friends were rehearsing for a performance Friday evening in the capital, Seoul, where they were invited to open an event celebrating hangeul heritage.
“Picking chili peppers at the pepper field, picking cucumbers at the cucumber field, picking eggplants at the eggplant field, picking zucchini at the zucchini field!” the group rapped along with Park. "We’re back home now and it feels so good!”
Park said the group usually practices two or three times a week, more if they're preparing for a show.
On Friday, hundreds of people applauded and cheered, and then the group lined up for a photo with South Korean Culture Minister Yu In Chon.
Park talked about the joy of learning to read, saying she can now “go to the bank, ride the bus and go anywhere” she wants without someone helping her.
“During and after the Korean War, I couldn’t study because of the social atmosphere, but I started learning hangeul in 2016,” Park said, referring to the devastating war between North and South Korea from 1950 to 1953. “Being introduced to rap while learning hangeul has made me feel better, and I thought it would help me stay healthy and avoid dementia.”
Kang Hye-eun, Park’s 29-year-old granddaughter and a local healthcare worker who helps older adults, said she was proud to see her grandmother on television and in viral videos.
“It’s amazing that she got to know hangeul like this and has started to rap,” she said.

‘Joker 2’ Stumbles at Box Office amid Poor Reviews from Audiences, Critics